Raspberry Pi is a small single-board computer capable of doing loads of tasks. It is the most popular Single Board computer known around the globe. The Raspberry Pi board has almost all the features which a personal computer or a laptop has. With the Raspberry Pi, we get to see our hardware more closely which gives us a better understanding of the actual process.
The hardware itself is nothing without a proper Operating System. When it comes to Raspberry Pi, most of the times we choose its official release. There are a lot of other OS options available for Raspberry Pi which we can consider according to our use cases. There are Operating Systems for Raspberry Pi dedicated to the Internet of Things, Media Player, Ethical Hacking, and Gaming.
This article is about the Operating Systems available for the single-board computer Raspberry Pi. All the Operating Systems available are good in their own ways, choosing the best is a hard choice to make with so many options available.
On visiting the official Raspberry Pi download page (https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/) we get Noobs and Raspbian. NOOBS is an OS installer for Raspberry Pi and Raspbian is the official Raspberry Pi OS from Raspberry Pi Foundation.
There are some third party operating systems listed on the same page.
1. Raspbian
Raspbian is the compatible, reliable and adaptable operating system for Raspberry Pi. The Raspbian operating systems are fully backward hardware compatible. It is a stable and high-performance operating system suitable for all types of Raspberry Pi users.
Raspbian comes with the PIXEL desktop (based on LXDE), which makes the Raspberry Pi usable as a daily desktop computer. There are preinstalled applications like Libre Office, Chromium, Minecraft, etc.
2. Ubuntu Mate
Ubuntu Mate is a widely used Linux distribution. Ubuntu MATE 18 is compatible with Raspberry Pi Model B 2, 3 and 3+. There is 2 separate image for armhf (ARMv7 32-bit) and arm64 (ARMv8 64-bit). More details about Ubuntu Mate installation are available at https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/.
Ubuntu Mate is not the first choice someone makes as its operating system. The reason for this is that it is not fully compatible with all the Raspberry Pi boards. Ubuntu itself is one of the most widely used Linux distribution, we can give it a try to take a break from the Raspbian operating systems.
3. Kali Linux
Kali is a Debian based Linux distribution preferred for penetration testing by ethical hackers. Kali has launched its operating system for Raspberry Pi 4 and other models. The kali Linux for Raspberry Pi is available at https://www.offensive-security.com/kali-linux-arm-images/#1493408272250-e17e9049-9ce8.
If you want to learn or play with wifi networks, it is perhaps the best choice available. Even if you are not into ethical hacking you can use Kali as your regular operating system.
4. Windows 10 IoT Core
A Raspberry Pi operating system dedicated to IoT. Windows 10 IoT Core provides better support for Azure and SQL server for saving data remotely and locally. The installation instructions and files are available at microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10IoTCore.
Microsoft launches feature updates every six months. Each feature update release will be supported and offered quality updates for 18 months from the time of its release.
5. OSMC
OSMC stands for Open Source Media Center is the Raspberry Pi OS for music and movies. OSMC is one of the best media player OS which gives a flavor of KODI on the top of Debian. It can play most of the media formats.
KODI OS is capable of providing support for almost all the media content. You can also stream Netflix and Prime Video, follow this article for more details Netflix and Amazon Prime Video Now Streaming on Raspberry Pi
OSMC is available at https://osmc.tv/download/.
6. RISC OS
RISC OS Open Limited (ROOL) manages the source code to RISC OS. RISC is customized for ARM devices. RISC OS is the best OS available for retro gaming with Raspberry Pi.
RISC OS for Raspberry Pi is available for https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi
2 thoughts on “The Perfect Raspberry Pi OS”
Arya
Nice. It was really helpful to me. I installed Ubuntu Mate but due to some reason firefox was slow and it freezes the os if i was on it for more than 2 minutes. But still it was useful.
Andy
It’s worth pointing out that RISC OS was the original ARM OS, designed for the ARM chip and to some degree the ARM chip was designed for RISC OS (and it’s previous incarnation, ARTHUR).
For those wanting to play retro games on RISC OS, they should look at JASPP’s ADFFS work, as well as AMCOG Games.