Raspberry Pi OS Now Based On Debian 12 "Bookworm" + Wayland

[Mateus Felipe]

The latest "Bookworm"-based Raspberry PI OS is listed as compatible with the 3B and 3B+:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/

Don't ask how it runs, I haven't tried it. I might have a play with it this weekend (I have the 3B+) if I have time.

Note: As usual, you are better off using the official MicroSD disk imaging utility (see here) and choosing the OS you want from there, the reason I linked to the above page is to point out that they consider it compatible with the 3B and 3B+.

Thanks!

I currently have no monitor nor TVs, so I don't really have a way to use my RPi, but as soon as I get one I want to set it up again.

[kurkosdr]

Thanks!

I currently have no monitor nor TVs, so I don't really have a way to use my RPi, but as soon as I get one I want to set it up again.

Out of curiosity, how can you have no monitors or TVs? You just unplug the HDMI cable from another device and plug it into the Raspberry Pi.

My problem with the Raspberry Pi is it doesn't do OpenGL (which means I can't run low-requirements games or good emulators on it), and doesn't have enough RAM for comfortable browsing, so I don't have any use for it after playing with its OS for some minutes. I keep it around if I ever need GNU/Linux so I don't have to have Desktop Linux VMs or partitions in my PCs but that's it.

[stargeizer]

The rpi's require that you have at least one monitor connected to the pi's at boot time, otherwise it will fallback to headless mode, so you really need to turn on the pi with the monitor connected and turned on.

For gaming on the pi's, there are dedicated distros for that. RPI's hardware never supported the full featured OpenGL, but the subset known as OpenGL ES and in case of the Pi4 and up, Vulkan. Of course if you have a PI3, is quite an outdated machine for gaming, and even for retrogaming nowadays.

Personally i recommend Batocera for gaming on the PI. (https://batocera.org), but as usual, YMMV.

[guglovich]

- The file manager pcmanfm is used to generate the desktop as before, but converted to use Wayland. To run applications that support only X11, the XWayland layer is provided. For those who do not want to use Wayland, the option of returning the X-server with Openbox window manager is implemented in the raspi-config configurator. In the future, the Wayland-based environment is planned to be used by default for older models of Raspberry Pi boards as well.

- The top panel has been replaced by a new wf-panel-pi panel (an offshoot of the wf-shell panel developed by the Wayfire project). The layout of the new panel is styled after the old lxpanel panel, and all previously available indicator plugins are ported to the new environment. Added a new GPU panel-plugin to display a GPU load graph. Enabled by default the Power plugin to track power consumption issues such as low voltage charge or overcurrent for the USB port.

- Added an option to raspi-config to use NetworkManager for network configuration instead of dhcpcd. When using NetworkManager, it is possible to work in wireless access point mode, connect to hidden wireless networks and work via VPN.

- Offers specially optimized Firefox browser builds for Raspberry Pi boards that support Widevine DRM, h.264 hardware video decoding, screen sharing on Wayland systems, and access to cameras connected via CSI port. Optimizations have been made to improve performance on older boards.

- Older features that are not compatible with Wayland include overscan and system tray. As a VNC server wayvnc is used, which lags behind the previously used RealVNC in the level of support for VNC clients, but works normally with the TigerVNC client. SenseHAT Emulator, Magnifier (not compatible with Wayfire), BlueJ IDE (not compatible with Wayland), Greenfoot IDE (not compatible with Wayland) and Sonic Pi (not compatible with PipeWire) have been removed from the list of recommended applications and from the full build.

[guglovich]

Once again, a lot of good things are removed for Wayland. And again it's called the final product.

[elatllat]

The 5 have a passive cooling option yet?

[Beryesa]

Do you know anything about the situation with those small weird gpio-mounted displays under wayland? Afaik they do xorg hackery to get anything working, I wonder if they'll somehow support Wayland later on.

[pracedru]

I've been trying for a couple of years and I still haven't got Wayland working on my system in a sane way.
Last try was Monday evening.
I can run Wayland on seat-2 with crap performance if I run it under X11 🙃

I've been using Gnome Wayland session for a year and in my opinion it outperforms X11.

[Etherman]

I've been using Gnome Wayland session for a year and in my opinion it outperforms X11.

It probably does but it simply doesn't work for my setup with dual GPUs and dual users.

[Istanbull]

Wow, wayland fanboys sure are defensive, preemptively attacking because they expect us to attack them. Nothing wrong with using your little monolith if-one-thing-comes-down-the-whole-thing-comes-down compositor, take a deep breath and relax.