The Raspberry Pi project has released a new version of the distribution kit Raspberry Pi OS 2026-06-18 (Raspbian). This distribution is built on the Debian 13 package base and includes approximately 35 thousand packages in the repository. The desktop environment is powered by the labwc composite server, utilizing the wlroots library from the Sway project. Three different versions are available for download: a compact version (537MB) for server systems, a basic desktop version (1.2 GB), and a full version packed with additional applications (1.9 GB). Both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures are supported. Additionally, an update has been released for the older edition of Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy), which is based on the Debian 12 package base.
Notable changes in this new release include:
- Upgrade to Linux kernel version 6.18 (previously running version 6.12).
- Update of the labwc composite server to version 0.9.7.
- Enhanced support for larger icons in the lxpanel panel.
- New icons introduced in the interface for installing additional software (Recommended Software) and in toolbars of applications like LibreOffice, geany, xarchiver, and eom.
- Added protection against running multiple instances of certain applications like pishutdown, rpcc, agnostics, bookshelf, gui-runcmd, rp-prefapps, and piclone simultaneously.
- Exclusion of the python3-flask package from the distribution.
