Operating systems for Raspberry Pi

Looking for a desktop, music server, media center, gaming machine, IoT device or a light naked system to run your own code? There's a lot to choose from. Check the list below of the most popular operating systems for Raspberry Pi to find solution that best suits your needs.

Full Systems

Please note that most full systems also have their official light version which might not be listed in the Light Systems section.

• Raspbian - image with PIXEL desktop based on Debian Jessie.
• Ubuntu MATE - stable, easy-to-use operating system with a configurable desktop environment. It is ideal for those who want the most out of their computers and prefer a traditional desktop metaphor.
• RISC OS - a fast and easily customised operating system for ARM devices
• Arch Linux ARM - port of Arch Linux, which aims for simplicity and full control to the end user. We provide a light-weight base structure that allows you to shape the system to your needs.
• FreeBSD - operating system for a variety of platforms which focuses on features, speed, and stability. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large community.
• NetBSD - free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent for use in both production and research environments, and the source code is freely available under a business-friendly license.
• Fedora - less setup, more innovation. Choose a flavor of Fedora streamlined for your needs, and get to work right away.
• Pidora - Fedora Remix optimized for the Raspberry Pi computer.
• Kali Linux - open source project that is maintained and funded by Offensive Security, a provider of world-class information security training and penetration testing services.

Light Systems

• minibian - minimal raspbian image for Raspberry Pi.
• DietPi - DietPi is extremely lightweight at its core, our images start at 400MB in size (3x lighter than 'Raspbian Lite'). With features of low process/memory footprint and DietPi-RAMlog installed by default, DietPi allows you to get the maximum performance from your device.
• piCore - simply an example of what the Core Project can produce, an 16MB FLTK/FLWM desktop.
• Alpine Linux - security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.

Media Centers

• OSMC - OSMC (Open Source Media Center) is a free and open source media player based on Linux. Founded in 2014, OSMC lets you play back media from your local network, attached storage and the Internet. OSMC is the leading media center in terms of feature set and community and is based on the Kodi project.
• LibreELEC - ‘Just enough OS’ for Kodi, a Linux distribution built to run Kodi on current and popular mediacentre hardware.
• OpenELEC - embedded operating system built around Kodi, the open source entertainment media hub. Home Theatre PCs are known to be hard to install and configure, and it can take a massive amount of time to keep them running.
• XBian - small, fast and lightweight media center distribution for the Raspberry Pi. It's based on a minimal Debian and therefore offers much of the same freedom as Debian offers.
• RasPlex - a Plex Client for the Raspberry Pi computer.
• openmediavault - next generation network attached storage (NAS) solution based on Debian Linux. It contains services like SSH, (S)FTP, SMB/CIFS, DAAP media server, RSync, BitTorrent client and many more. Thanks to the modular design of the framework it can be enhanced via plugins.

Music Players

• Volumio - free and Open Source Linux Distribution, designed and fine-tuned exclusively for music playback. It runs on a variety of devices, typically small and cheap computers like the Raspberry PI, but also on low power PCs, notebooks or thin clients.
• RuneAudio - free and open source software with one specific objective: to transform an embedded platform into an Hi-Fi digital music player. It offers a lot of features and aims to be easy to use, flexible and future-proof.
• Raspberry Pi Music Player - WHY USE THE RPI FOR PLAYING MUSIC? Because it will change the way you listened to music until now.
• Pi MusicBox - create a cheap (Sonos-like) standalone streaming music player for Spotify, Google Music, SoundCloud, Webradio, Podcasts and other music from the cloud.
• Mopidy - plays music from local disk, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play Music, and more. You edit the playlist from any phone, tablet, or computer using a range of MPD and web clients.
• moodeaudio - professional grade, flexible audio enclosure system for Raspberry Pi-2/3 that can be configured for either DAC or Amp HAT boards.

Gaming Emulators

• RetroPie - turn your Raspberry Pi into a retro-gaming machine. It builds upon Raspbian, EmulationStation, RetroArch and many other projects to enable you to play your favourite Arcade, home-console, and classic PC games with the minimum set-up.
• Recalbox - allows you to re-play a variety of videogame consoles and platforms in your living room, with ease! RecalboxOS is free, open source and designed to let you create your very own recalbox in no time!
• Lakka - lightweight Linux distribution that transforms a small computer into a full blown game console.
• PiPlay - gaming and emulation for the Raspberry Pi.

Security

• motionEyeOS - Linux distribution that turns your single board computer into a video surveillance system.
• Kerberos.io - free video surveillance solution, which works with any camera and on every Linux based machine.
• Parrot Security - security GNU/Linux distribution designed with cloud pentesting and IoT security in mind. It includes a full portable laboratory for security and digital forensics experts, but it also includes all you need to develop your own softwares or protect your privacy with anonymity and crypto tools.
• upribox - small network box that fits in the palm of your hand. Protection of your Internet-enabled devices.
• Syncloud - our own online file storage, social network or email server. Great applications like ownCloud and Diaspora are available.

Assistants and Home Automation

• picroft - Mycroft for Raspberry Pi. World’s first open source voice assistant.
• PiDome - Open Source Home Automation platform developed especially for the raspberry Pi leveraging this little nifty credit card sized computer to a full Home Automation solution.
• Prota Pi - access and fully control every aspect of Raspberry Pi from your smartphone, tablet, or computer remotely over the Internet for free!
• OpenPlotter - openPlotter is a combination of software and hardware to be used as navigational aid on small and medium boats. It is also a complete home automation system onboard.

Education

• PiNeT - centralised user accounts and file storage system for a Raspberry Pi classroom.
• KA-Pi - A Plug and Play, Simple, server solution to play the Khan Academy videos where no Internet access is available, from a green, low-power, small Raspberry Pi computer.

Boot Managers and Helpers

• NOOBS - an easy operating system installer, provides a selection of alternative operating systems which are then downloaded from the internet and installed.
• BerryBoot - simple boot selection screen, that allows you to put multiple Linux distributions on a single SD card.
• Multi Boot Pi - for all your multi-boot needs.

Other

• Raspberry Pi weather station - HAT for the Raspberry Pi which allows it to collect weather data using a variety of sensors. It is designed to be used in schools to enable students to create their own weather station, and has a range of resources to support its use.
• SamplerBox - audio sampler. Download image and put it on a microSD card, boot it, connect a USB MIDI keyboard, and it will work!
• OctoPi - distribution for 3d printers.
• RasPBX - a complete install of Asterisk and FreePBX for Raspberry Pi. Asterisk is a free and open source framework for building communications applications and is sponsored by Digium.
• OpenWrt - embedded operating system based on Linux, primarily used on embedded devices to route network traffic.
• Windows 10 IoT Core - The Internet of Things (IoT) brings together devices, sensors, data and the cloud. Unlike a computer or tablet, IoT devices can access specific hardware like lights, sensors and motors. This lets you build both fun projects or professional devices.
• Android Things - lets you build professional, mass-market products on a trusted platform, without previous knowledge of embedded system design.
• Amibian - what you need to transform your raspberry pi3 into an Amiga.
• AROS - lightweight, efficient, and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level.
• Ultibo - with the ease of a microcontroller and the flexibility of a real computer, Ultibo gives you a platform for creating anything without the limitations of a traditional operating system.