The final bookworm-based Raspberry Pi OS update arrives

Last big release until trixie shows up

Debian bookworm is getting what could be its last hurrah as the basis for Raspberry Pi's operating system, with what's likely to be its final appearance on a release for the diminutive computers.

The last major release of Raspberry Pi OS was in November 2024, meaning that there are plenty of changes in this latest update, both visible and under the hood.

One of the most visible changes is around how the screen locking works. A modified version of the swaylock screen locking application has been added; the update adds some feedback to give users a clue about what has happened and how to unlock the device.

Senior principal software engineer at Raspberry Pi, Simon Long, said, "Anyone who has used swaylock will be familiar with its somewhat minimal interface – when you lock the screen, you just get a completely white screen with no indication of what has happened or what you need to do.

"We felt this was a bit unhelpful..."

The team has also split console and desktop auto login, meaning that while a command-line console can be accessed by holding down Control, Alt, and a function key, doing so can be disabled. After all, there isn’t a lot of point in having a password-protected lock screen when a console can be accessed with a simple key combination.

Other changes include an updated printers application, porting the printer control plugin from the GNOME desktop control centre, and changes in touchscreen support.

The touchscreen changes are interesting, since the team has used mouse emulation by default. This is great, as it means that a user's finger on the screen works as a virtual mouse, with a double-tap being the equivalent of a double-click. The downside is that other touch functions with which users are familiar, such as swiping the screen to scroll, don't work as expected..

However, going touch-native means that other applications, such as the file manager, will be more challenging to use.

In response to users wondering why touch functions don't always align with expectations, an option to switch to and from mouse emulation has been added.

Long said, "Hopefully, at some point Wayland touchscreen support will be mature enough that it is no longer necessary to offer this option, but in the meantime, this lets users choose their preferred behaviour."

Users might also notice the taskbar taking less time to start after boot. However, in addition to the performance optimizations, Chromium could also look a little different. Changes made by the browser's authors mean it is no longer possible for the Raspberry Pi team to pre-install the uBlock Origin adblocker. Long said, "From this release onwards, we are pre-installing the slightly less full-featured uBlock Origin Lite."

Other browsers are, of course, available (Firefox, for example, is also installed.)

We ran the update and can report that it worked as advertised. The printers application (named rpinters – Long said "I do enjoy coming up with groan-worthy puns for app names") is a welcome improvement. The performance improvements around the desktop and taskbar are slight but noticeable. All told, it's a useful rather than earth-shattering update, which is just how we like it.

The release runs on version 6.12 of the Linux kernel. If everything goes according to plan, the next major update will be based on the upcoming Debian release, trixie. ®