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The Raspberry Pi Foundation released today a new build of their Debian-based Raspberry Pi OS operating for the Raspberry Pi single-board computers adding a new kernel from the Linux 6.6 long-term supported series, updated components, and various improvements.
While still based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” operating system series, Raspberry Pi OS is now powered by the Linux 6.6 LTS kernel series, which is a major upgrade from Linux kernel 6.1 LTS used in previous releases. This update also includes the latest Chromium 122 and Mozilla Firefox 123 web browsers.
The new Raspberry Pi OS release offers better support for the latest Raspberry Pi 5 SBC by improving the handling of the power button. In addition, it also adds new settings for headless resolution to the Screen Configuration, while removing the setting of headless resolution for Wayland from Raspberry Pi Configuration.
This release also improves compatibility with alternative window managers, improves the new dark theme introduced in the previous release by ensuring some widgets are now correctly displayed, and speeds up the opening of the Bluetooth and Network menus.
Moreover, the popover windows from the taskbar have been replaced with conventional windows, the shutdown assistant was updated to close all user processes when logging out, and the audio icon on the taskbar is now hidden by default if no audio devices are connected.
Other than that, the new Raspberry Pi OS release adds an alternative mouse cursor that’s shown during drag-and-drop operations and updates the raspi-config utility to allow the EEPROM to be updated.
Last but not least, the WayVNC VNC server was updated to improve compatibility with various VNC clients and to be controlled by systemd, and various bugs were plugged to prevent multiple file manager confirm dialogs from being overlaid, memory leaks in the Volume and Bluetooth menus, and a crash when closing windows with non-GTK headerbars.
A bug that prevented the GPU load from being correctly reported in the Task Manager and the plugin was addressed as well, along with an issue where the incorrect files were moved when dragging and dropping them in the file manager, a bug that prevented the Wayfire keyboard layout settings not to load, as well as an issue causing windows from being hidden from the taskbar on other monitors.
A couple of other issues were also fixed, and you can study the full changelog here. Unfortunately, the issue causing wireless networks to not be displayed in the first-run setup wizard on Raspberry Pi 5 is still there, at least for me.
You can download Raspberry Pi OS 2024-03-12 from the official website for all supported Raspberry Pi models. Of course, existing users will be able to update their installations by using the graphical updating utility or by running the sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade commands from a terminal window.
Update 15/03/2024: Raspberry Pi OS 2024-03-15 was released a few days after I wrote this article bringing the latest Orca 45 screen reader along with an improved keyboard shortcut for installing the program to no longer prompt users for a password, fixing a bug that prevents audio streams from being interrupted when connecting or disconnecting other audio devices, fixing a bug that prevented saved display resolution settings from being reloading under X, and removing the obsolete fbturbo video driver.
Last updated 1 month ago
