| Title | Raspberry Pi OS Gets a New Kernel but Apparently Not a New Version Number | |
| Date | Sunday July 05, @06:52PM | |
| Author | hubie | |
| Topic | ||
| from the dept. | ||
The distro formerly known as Raspbian has received some modest tweaks – and a whole new kernel version.
Raspberry Pi Ltd is a little capricious when it comes to version numbering for Raspberry Pi OS, and although this release contains a fairly significant change, it doesn't seem to have a different version number. While PiOS is based on Debian 13 "Trixie," the company significantly customizes upstream Debian, including newer kernels.
For 13 years now, Raspberry Pi has been adding new sections to the top of a single release notes file, which tells us that this build is dated 2026-06-18 and updates the kernel from version 6.12.75 to version 6.18.34. Even so, the version number on the splash screen is strangely unchanged. It remains at 6.2, which was the modest security update announced in April. Now there's a much bigger change – but no announcement and no new version number. So much for version numbers having meaning.
[...] So what is new in the latest version of PiOS? Well, the kernel is now version 6.18 from November, which became the LTS kernel within days. By default, PiOS 6 uses the labcw Wayland compositor with some components drawn from LXDE, such as the panel and file manager.
This is in place of its old customized version of LXDE, formerly called PIXEL. This release includes labwc version 0.9.7, replacing version 0.9.2. You can still switch back to Openbox for an X11 desktop if you want, but this disables the Wayland-based Raspberry Pi Connect that was added a couple of years ago (and might yet make it over to Windows).
[...] We upgraded a testbed Pi 5 from the January release, and it went smoothly with no apparent difference – and it still only takes about 560 MB of RAM under X11, which is very good for 2026. The new kernel means that some functions are slightly slower and some slightly faster, but you probably won't be able to tell. For the full lowdown, Linux news site Phoronix has extensive benchmarks.
[...] The new Wayland-based PiOS desktop environment is one of our favorites: it's simple, clean, and fast. Back in 2022, we said it was the best way to revive an old PC. The sad thing is that it still is. It takes as little memory as, say, BunsenLabs Carbon or Crunchbang++, but it's a much more familiar desktop layout and easier to use.
[...] There are lots of lightweight Linux distros out there. We still recommend Alpine Linux, but it needs some skill to install, especially if you want to dual-boot – it's harder than Arch Linux. Adélie Linux looks very promising but it's still in beta (there hasn't been a new release since we looked at it in late 2024). There are many others, but they're all rather specialist tools that need some Linux skills. The PiOS Desktop was by far the easiest.
The Linux world badly needs more lightweight distros that are ruthlessly easy to install – as the Raspberry Pi Desktop was. They need to offer a simple, quick, clean, Windows-like desktop – not something different for its own sake, like GNOME, or cluttered with myriad needless options like KDE Plasma. Something that will work happily on a 15-year-old PC with 3 GB of DDR2 RAM and a spinning disk – the sort of PC that still works fine, but would cost more to upgrade than the price of a Raspberry Pi 5. A distro that works happily on X11 would be a win, too, for old and unsupported GPUs.
The Raspberry Pi Desktop once fit that bill very well. The PC world could really benefit from a freshened-up version. If Mike Thompson and Peter Green from the original project are still around, they might even help.
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printed from SoylentNews, Raspberry Pi OS Gets a New Kernel but Apparently Not a New Version Number on 2026-07-13 06:14:11