We're past summertime, and it's an odd-numbered year, which means there is a new major release of Debian Linux, which in turn means there is a new major release of Raspberry Pi OS. This year's version of Debian is called Trixie - as many of you know, Debian releases are named after characters in Disney's Toy Story series of films, but all the well-known characters have already been used, so the names are getting increasingly obscure! Trixie is apparently a blue plastic triceratops who appears in Toy Story 3, but I must admit I can't remember her - then again, I only watched that one once, because it got a bit sad towards the end…

A Raspberry Pi Monitor displaying the new Raspberry Pi OS Trixie desktop wallpaper, which shows a golden sunrise over dramatic silhouetted mountain peaks
Resplendent But I digress. So we have a new version of Raspberry Pi OS - what has changed? The last few Debian releases have had fewer major architectural changes than the earlier ones; Debian itself seems to be a lot more stable in terms of the major components, and while various bits do get upgraded, the overall design seems not to change much any more.

We've just published a new version of Raspberry Pi OS - our recommended (and free) operating system for all Raspberry Pi computers - and it's now available for download. Scroll to the bottom of this post to find instructions for updating, or read on to find out what has changed. As many of you already know, Debian Linux works on a two-year release cycle - every odd-numbered year, a new major version is released, and it being 2025, there will be one in the next few months.

So this is probably the final release of Raspberry Pi OS which is based on Debian 'bookworm', before Debian 'trixie' is released this summer. The last full release we made was back in November last year, and there have been quite a few changes since then, so here's a summary of the most important.