The Raspberry Pi project has published a new version of the distribution kit Raspberry Pi OS 2026-10-06 (Raspbian) and announced the formation of Live builds (2.6 GB), intended for installation on computers with processors based on the x86_64 architecture. Like the assemblies for ARM Raspberry Pi boards, the new version is built on the Debian 13 package base. In addition to booting from USB drives, the PC version includes the Calamares installer, which allows you to install the system on a stationary hard drive or SSD.
The build for PC includes, among other things, the Raspberry Pi Connect service, designed for remote connection to the desktop of the Raspberry Pi OS distribution via a web browser. The desktop environment is based on the labwc composite server, using the wlroots library from the Sway project.
Among the changes in the new version of Raspberry Pi OS: the supply of better icons for menus, the appearance of tooltips about the essence of widgets and the Control Center configurator, support for automounting encrypted disk drives, adding widgets to the panel to show the battery charge and calling the squeekboard on-screen keyboard.
You can also note the general modernization of the design of the desktop environment and the addition of a new dock panel in addition to the classic taskbar. Instead of the old program menu, two widgets are offered for launching applications – a full-screen navigation interface for available programs with a search function and a widget built into the panel, combining a list of open windows and an area for quickly launching applications.
The new dock panel can be placed simultaneously with the old taskbar, for example, the old panel can be docked at the top of the window to display status indicators, and the new dock panel is placed at the bottom and is responsible for displaying a list of windows and the interface launch applications. The composition and placement of panels is configured in the configurator.
