Raspbian Buster: The New Default Operating System for Raspberry Pi

After the surprise release of Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a new version of its default operating system Raspbian, Raspbian Buster. Maintaining the software backward-compatibility with older hardware, Buster will be the default operating system for all models of Raspberry Pi.

The tweet from official Raspberry Pi account reads

“It's not only #RaspberryPi4 that's new; we've released a new version of Raspbian, our default operating system for all models of Raspberry Pi, too.”

The Raspbian Buster released as the successor of Raspbian Stretch which was the default Raspberry Pi operating system for almost 2 years, is compatible with all the models of Raspberry Pi. Buster is based on the latest version of Debian Linux 10, with Linux kernel version 4.19, and 8.3 GCC compiler. As the previous Raspbian operating systems, Buster also provides users with the PIXEL (composed of LXDE) desktop environment. 

The Rabian Buster is released before the official Debian release date for Debian Buster. And the reason for this advance release as stated in the Raspberry Pi blog is that the open-source OpenGL video driver is now being used by default, and this was developed using the most recent version of Debian.

“ It would have been a lot of work to port everything required for it back on to Raspbian Stretch, so we decided that we would launch on Raspbian Buster – the only question was whether Buster would be ready before the hardware was!”

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/buster-the-new-version-of-raspbian/

What’s new in Buster?

There are no major noticeable differences between predecessor Rasbian Stretch and Raspbian Buster. Most of the changes are made on security issues to make Raspberry Pi harder to hack.  If you have downloaded “Raspbian Buster with desktop and recommended software” most of the preinstalled applications are the same and a few more are added. The ‘Eject’ icon for removing USB devices only appears if there are USB devices to eject.

Get Buster for your Raspberry Pi

You can download Buster from the official website of Raspberry Pi. Like previous versions, Raspian buster is available to download as ‘zip’ or through torrent, with three download options- ‘Raspbian Buster with desktop and recommended software’, ‘ Raspbian Buster with desktop’, and ‘Raspbian Buster Lite’. To download Raspbian Buster go to the official website of Raspberry Pi, Open ‘Downloads’ and select ‘Raspbian’. 

Or visit-

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

You can also upgrade your Stretch to Buster, Follow these steps to upgrade to Buster:

1. In the files /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list, change every use of the word “stretch” to “buster”.

2. In a terminal,

sudo apt update

and then

sudo apt dist-upgrade

3. Wait for the upgrade to complete, answering ‘yes’ to any prompt. There may also be a point at which the install pauses while a page of information is shown on the screen – hold the ‘space’ key to scroll through all of this and then hit ‘q’ to continue.

4. The update will take anywhere from half an hour to several hours, depending on your network speed. When it completes, reboot your Raspberry Pi.

5. When the Pi has rebooted, launch ‘Appearance Settings’ from the main menu, go to the ‘Defaults’ tab, and press whichever ‘Set Defaults’ button is appropriate for your screen size in order to load the new UI theme.

6. Buster will have installed several new applications which are not supported. To remove them, open a terminal window and

sudo apt purge timidity lxmusic gnome-disk-utility deluge-gtk evince wicd wicd-gtk clipit usermode gucharmap gnome-system-tools pavucontrol