Raspberry Pi Desktop returns for PC and Mac — now on Debian Trixie

Raspberry Pi has released a new version of its signature desktop environment, Raspberry Pi Desktop for PC and Mac — the first in several years. The build sits on top of the latest Debian Trixie and is already available to download from the official site.

A side quest that became a product

The story goes back to 2016. Author Simon Long had just reshaped the stock LXDE environment into something recognisably Raspberry Pi (the name PIXEL — Pi XWindows Environment Lightweight — had to be dropped, since another tech company had already claimed the word). CEO Eben Upton walked past and mused: wouldn't it be cool to run this on his Mac?

A couple of weekends later, idly curious, Long checked how hard it would be — and soon had a near-complete Raspberry Pi desktop booting from a USB stick on a MacBook. By Christmas 2016 a bootable DVD with the PC and Mac version was given away on the cover of The MagPi magazine, and in 2017 an installable build followed. Both proved far more popular than anyone expected.

Why it took so long

That popularity became a burden. The company makes its money selling Raspberry Pi hardware and gives the software away for free, so justifying engineering time for a version running on other people's machines was never easy. The build was updated for Debian Buster and Bullseye, then other work took over. All the while, two or three emails a week kept arriving asking when a new version would land.

What's new

Now there's an answer. The build has moved to 64-bit (amd64), since Debian itself has dropped 32-bit support for PCs. The team reckons most computers from the past fifteen years, and Intel-based Macs, will run it happily. Owners of Apple Silicon Macs are out of luck, though — Debian's support for that platform is still experimental.

The environment carries all the current additions, including the Control Centre and the new dock. It also bundles the Raspberry Pi Connect client, so you can now remotely control not just Pis but a regular PC or Mac too. The only difference: when setting up a PC you must enter a name to identify the device, whereas a Raspberry Pi uses a unique hardware ID instead.

How to install

The Desktop ships as a live Debian image: flash the .iso to a USB stick and boot from it. In the menu, choose the option with persistence so your changes are saved. If you prefer, you can install the system to disk using the standard Calamares installer. Upgrading from an older release isn't possible — it has to be a clean reinstall, since the previous builds were 32-bit.

Asked whether this might be another one-off, the team is cautious: no firm promises, but they do intend to keep supporting and updating it — a lot will depend on how many people actually download and use it.

Source: Lobsters