A lot has been going on in the world of Raspberry Pi during the past few weeks. Raspberry Pi launched the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 in October. The Raspberry Pi 400 and the Rasberry Pi 4 Case Fan came in November. And now, as we approach the final days of 2020, we get a new release of Raspberry Pi OS. 

New Raspberry Pi OS Features

Let's take a look at what's new. 
 
  • The Chromium browser was updated to version 84. "That’s done now, so you should see good-quality video playback on sites like YouTube," Raspberry Pi Sr. Software Engineer Simon Long writes on the blog. "We’ve also, given events this year, done a lot of testing and tweaking on video conferencing clients such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, and they should all now work smoothly on your Raspberry Pi’s Chromium."
 
  • A switch from Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) to the PulseAudio sound server. Why? Raspberry Pi lists various reasons for the switch from ALSA, such as the fact that it doesn't work with Bluetooth without a little extra code. "PulseAudio now runs by default, and while the volume control and audio input/output selector on the taskbar looks almost identical to the one in previous releases of the OS, it is now controlling PulseAudio rather than ALSA," Long notes. 
 
  • New Raspberry Pi Configuration tool options, particularly in the System and Performance sections. For instance, on the latter, "there are options to allow you to control the new Raspberry Pi Case Fan," Long explains.
 
  • Printing solution with CUPS and system-config-printer. "This fills in one of the last things missing in making Raspberry Pi a complete desktop computer, by making it easy to set up a printer and print from applications such as LibreOffice," Long writes. 
 
New Raspberry Pi OS Release
New Raspberry Pi OS Release
 

Get Started

Want to learn more? Or perhaps you are ready to install? Read about the details and get cracking!