New version of Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi – moves to “Jessie”

Exciting news on the operating system front this morning.

Raspbian, the standard OS for the Raspberry Pi, now uses the Jessie version of Debian as a base. This has introduced several new improvements, chiefly among which are:

  • sudo-less GPIO access
  • User interface improvements, including the replacement of raspi-config with a GUI version
  • Two new Java programming environments
  • Inclusion of LibreOffice as standard (for better or worse!)

More information on the improvements can be found on the Foundation’s blog.

The 4.3GB image is available as a download from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

It is recommended that you start with a new install (i.e. overwrite the SD card completely) as the upgrade path isn’t all that stable. This could prove a problem for some users, who already have stuff on their SD cards they don’t want to lose, but I’m sure the benefits outweigh the effort of transferring your stuff elsewhere first (for instance to GitHub).

8 comments for “New version of Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi – moves to “Jessie”

  1. Those having difficulty unzipping the file with unzip try using “7z x” instead. Also note that you can copy your files off beforehand and put them back. They should (hopefully) still work.

    • I think it’s because of the sheer number of differences between the last version and Jessie. I’m not sure what will happen if you upgrade, but I suggest backing up your work first.

    • OK I shall try a fresh install. However am puzzled that Jessie download ZIP file size is reported at 1.2GB (compressed) and the article above says 4.5GB. That’s amazing compression if so.

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