Raspberry Pi OS

Reader supplied reviews for Raspberry Pi OS Average rating 7.6 from 17 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Raspberry Pi OS? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 2025-12-042025-05-132023-05-032020-12-022019-04-082018-11-132017-07-052015-02-16 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 2025-12-04 Rating: 8 Date: 2026-01-28 Votes: 0 The newest release 2025-12-04 is basically the same, but change a lot. I run on RPI5 4GB from USB3-dongle, and the lightweight tools packed with the distro do their work. stability is rock-solid. Looking at the app-menu, a lot of item have been removed, and the control centre integrate a lot of tools saddly a lot of basic settings are missing user manager, smb-share manager, keyring, theming. worse, the printer settings do hide the menu, solution is using localhost:631 or install the old system-config-printer (this will remove the entry from the control-centre) sudo apt install system-config-printer sudo usermod -aG lpadmin $USER Geany is finally updated, plugins are compatible. also raspi-config menu entry has been deleted (must have tool expand filesystem) future release will improve those regressions, and maybe add some touch-display friendly apps theming is not available, the imposed look is not exciting, but not buggy? pcmanfm seems a lot less buggy, but still very basic Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2025-12-04 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-12-09 Votes: 2 For hardware reference, this evaluation was from use on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 4 GB RAM (OK, actually 3887864 KB), running on Amazon 256 GB SD Cards with no hats or other GPIO header connections, using a case that is its own heat sink (no fan). For further OS relevance, we used the Raspberry PI imager, Raspberry Pi OS (Other), Raspberry PI OS Full (64 bit) [ 1.9 GB versus 1.2 GB for Raspberry PI OS (64-bit) ] Not even withstanding that this operating system (OS) is designed to run on a tiny single-board computer (Raspberry PI 4 and 5), this OS is amazingly snappy, with minor exceptions. The exceptions are not germain specifically to this OS: rather to its Debian underpinnings and to IP transit across the globe. Particularly impressive was the SD Card Copier app which is significantly faster than the standard Linux (dd) disk copy procedure. It apparently duplicates the partitions and then duplicates the files in the partitions, reducing the process from about 4 hours to just several minutes. WE RECOMMEND YOU DO MAKE A BACKUP IMAGE immediately as it's significantly faster to recover from a terminal mistake than re-downloading the OS to fix the problem. Exceptions: (1) Where Debian updates rely on Fastly DNS, the OS tends to require several attempts to access the Debian update server but if you have access to Fastly, it will eventually connect on several retries. This is solely a consequence of Debian: RaspOS's underpinnings. (2) Where the "Recommended Software" app accesses Raspian BluSky servers (across the "Pond"), we experienced it will connect after a couple of attempts. (Maybe that was our DNS or IP transit.) (3) The screen blanker (Preferences - Control Center - Display) went "Out to Lunch" for us...and never came back. We had to reboot. We disabled the screen blanker and everything was fine. (4) Drag-and-Drop from desktop folder to folder didn't work for us at all. This seems minor as we're completely competent to copy files using the Command Line Interface (CLI). It seems relevant to note that, as a result of our testing of this OS, we've adopted this OS (and consequently its native hardware) to standardize around for single-board computers. Discouraging "gotcha's": o- If, in the course of installation, you ask for Chrome and to have Firefox removed, it won't. You have to remove Firefox manually using the "Add-Remove Software" app. That works just fine. o- We have no idea what the root password is for RaspiOS but we'd suggest you make a point of changing it, since everyone else may know the password. o- In the course of installation (Raspberry PI Imager), it's probably best to set the name and location of the server since Chromium is sensitive to changing the server name. It may seem excessive but it's probably a good idea. o- If running RaspiOS on a Raspberry PI on a Raspberry PI 4, without a built-in clock, it's possible to get into trouble if you don't remember to sync the time on every boot (rc.local and timesyncd or something else). Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2024-11-19 Rating: 8 Date: 2025-01-16 Votes: 4 I wanted to add this review because I've noticed some strange things with performance. The responsiveness is sometimes the exact opposite of what you'd expect. I had better performance on the PI5 with KDE than other desktop environments (though I think a lot of that has to do with it working much better with Wayland than x11). In terms of the PI4b, the more time goes by, the more releases seem strangely divided on performance. I've gotten better responsiveness from Cinnamon than from XFCE or MATE (especially with video and web browsing). In fact, I'd say that Cinnamon is almost as responsive as an IceWM setup I cobbled together with Thunar and Picom. But, with previous releases, I'd say that XFCE and MATE performed better and desktop environments like Cinnamon were a lot slower and less responsive. I still can't stand the default desktop environment that comes with the desktop install of Raspberry PI OS. It's frustrating to use, ridiculously buggy, has too many options hidden or obscured, and I haven't found one scenario where I'd prefer it over something else. To each their own, but I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Also worth noting, there are issues with the installer that need to be fixed. They're ongoing problems which don't seem to have been addressed. For some reason, during installation of the OS, you can select a keyboard, but it doesn't ask you anything else. It just kind of decides to default everything else to UK settings. (I've tried setting up preferences when using the imager to burn the image onto the SD card, but more often than not, they don't seem to stick.) So, you could be in the US or Siberia or Timbuktu and select your keyboard reflecting that, then you boot up and your time zone and language settings are for the UK. So, the clock is hours off and you have a "Wastebasket" instead of a "Trash" icon on your desktop. (Equal parts funny and annoying.) You can change those settings through `raspi-config`, but it feels like it really should be addressed during the installation process instead of having to launch a separate program to deal with it. Overall, I'd still recommend this OS for the PI systems (particularly the 4b and 5), as it's the best I've found for performance, stability, and reliability. I'd just recommend the Lite 64-bit installation (currently Bookworm) and for you to shop around for desktop environments. Having Cinnamon be almost snappy in performance on a PI4b is pretty surprising, given how other desktops have performed. I'd recommend getting an extra SD card and experimenting with different desktop environments to test performance before deciding on one. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 17 reader reviews of Raspberry Pi OS...