Raspberry Pi users will soon have a new OS to play with
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Raspberry Pi users can now look forward to using a new operating system which should be available in the final quarter of this year for the latest Pi devices.
The previously unsupported Fedora operating system will now be fully operable on the Raspberry Pi 4, with approval granted from The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) in the first week of August 2022.
There should be no surprise that Fedora 37 is yet another version of Linux, but its credentials extend far enough that it is rumored to be the chosen distro of Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
Fedora OS for Raspberry Pi
According to Phoronix (opens in new tab), official signoff for Fedora 37 has been granted to the Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi 400, and the Compute Model 4. It is expected that general availability shall begin in October 2022.
Fedora Workstation (one of three versions) is destined for use on the Raspberry Pi 4, which uses the familiar GNOME desktop environment. Graphics drivers, OpenGL drivers, and GPU certification for Vulkan are all behind this decision.
Fedora’s Wiki (opens in new tab) summarizes: “The work around Raspberry Pi 4 has been on going for a number of years, but we’ve never officially supported it due to lack of accelerated graphics and other key features. With Fedora 37, Raspberry Pi 4 is now officially supported, including accelerated graphics using the V3D GPU.”
It continues: “The support for the Raspberry Pi ecosystem has been an ongoing evolution. The aim of this change is to support the Raspberry Pi 4 including the 4B, the 400 and the CM4 with IO board.”
With more Linux distros destined for the Raspberry Pi, Windows and macOS machines may soon be under greater threat than they had previously expected.