The official operating system for the Raspberry Pi has changed its name from Raspbian, to Raspberry Pi OS. However, the name isn't the only thing that has changed, as the Raspberry Pi OS now also comes in a 64-bit version. 

Raspbian was initially released back in June 2012 by its two developers, Peter Green and Mike Thompson. The two have since worked closely with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to optimise their software for the Raspberry Pi itself, and in 2015 Raspbian became the official operating system for Raspberry Pi.

Peter Green posted a message on the Raspberry Pi forum where he commented about the name change: “As cofounder of raspbian I would like to clarify the situation. There is no takeover here just some clearing up of terminology.” So we can expect Green and Thompson to still play an active role in the development of the OS.

Image credit: Tom'sHardware

However, since the initial release, so much has happened under the hood of the operating system that, according to Green, a name change was overdue. Green stated: “For a while now raspberry pi have been considering 64-bit images, Eben (Upton, founder of Raspberry Pi) sent me an email asking my opinion about nomanclature and I expressed that I would not be pleased about the use of the name “Raspbian” for images that did not contain anything from Raspbian.”

The newly-renamed OS now offers 64-bit support to go hand-in-hand with the new SBCs shipping with 8GB RAM.

KitGuru says: Do you run Raspberry Pi OS on your Raspberry Pi? If so, are you satisfied with the operating system?

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