Pop!_OS is now available for the Raspberry Pi.
The sweetly-named Pop!_Pi is available to download as a ‘tech preview’ alongside the latest Pop!_OS 21.10 release from System76.
While Pop!_Pi is the first version of Pop!_OS to be available for Raspberry Pi devices it doesn’t support all Raspberry Pi Models. Instead, the Pop!_Pi tech preview caters to the ‘desktop class’ Raspberry Pi 4 board (which regular Ubuntu also supports). It requires the model with 4GB RAM or more.
If you use Linux (whatever flavour) you’ll have no doubt heard of the Raspberry Pi even if you haven’t ever used one. The line of cheap mini-computers has been nothing short of a revolution, lowering the barrier to entry for tech across the world and throughout industry.
System76 say “Pop!_Pi was built for the Raspberry Pi 4 to gain experience building for ARM platforms”. The experiment wasn’t initially intended for a public release but performed so ‘much better than anticipated’ that System76 couldn’t keep it to themselves!
As a tech preview this build does not receive the same level of testing and QA as the full-bodied version of Pop!_OS for the desktop.
But with Pop!_OS already broadening Linux’s appeal on the desktop, it’s likely to prove a fruitful expansion to these dinky developer devices too.
Fancy trying it out?
You can download Pop!_Pi from the Pop!_OS download page on the System76 website.