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Bullseye – the new version of Raspberry Pi OS

Every two years, Debian Linux, on which Raspberry Pi OS is based, gets a major version upgrade. Debian ‘buster’ has been the basis of Raspberry Pi OS since its release in 2019, and Debian ‘bullseye’ was released in August. (As some of you may know, Debian name their versions after characters in Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story films – Bullseye was Woody’s horse in Toy Story 2.)

We’ve been working on the corresponding ‘bullseye’ release of Raspberry Pi OS; it’s taken a bit longer than we’d hoped, but it is now available. So what is new this time?

Debian ‘bullseye’ has relatively few major changes which are visible to users – there are some under-the-hood changes to file systems and printing, but most of the changes are patches and upgrades to existing applications and features. However, over and above the changes in Debian itself, the ‘bullseye’ version of Raspberry Pi OS has a number of significant changes to the desktop environment and to the support for Raspberry Pi hardware.

GTK+3

All of the desktop components and applications are now using version 3 of the GTK+ user interface toolkit. GTK+ is a layer of software that applications can use to draw standard user interface components (known as “widgets”) such as buttons, menus and the like, so that all applications have a consistent look and feel. Up until now, most of the desktop has used version 2 of the GTK+ toolkit, but increasing numbers of Debian applications are using GTK+3, so to try and keep things consistent, we’ve upgraded all our software and the desktop itself to the newer version.

GTK+3 has been around for several years now, and people have occasionally asked why we didn’t move to it before now. The simple answer is that many things are much easier to do with GTK+2 than with GTK+3, particularly when it comes to customising the appearance of widgets – GTK+3 has removed several useful features which we relied upon. It has ended up being necessary to find work-arounds to a lot of these – hopefully no one will notice them and everything will still work as before!

You’ll notice a few changes to widgets – the most obvious is the new appearance of tabbed interfaces.

Some other controls have a slightly different appearance, but we’ve tried to make sure that everything still looks familiar and largely unchanged. GTK+3 just gives us a more modern basis for future development, and brings us into line with other Linux desktop environments.

Window manager

One of the changes which was prompted by the move to GTK+3 is that we are using a new window manager, called mutter, instead of the openbox window manager used in previous releases.

The window manager is responsible for drawing the title bar and window frame around each application window. Mutter is what is known as a compositing window manager, which means that rather than individually drawing the window frames straight onto the existing windows on screen, it draws all the windows to a memory buffer off screen, where it creates a complete image for the entire screen. This is then sent to the hardware to be displayed.

Because it has control of the whole screen, a compositing window manager can create some nice visual effects which are not possible (or at least not easy) with a traditional window manager: for instance, it can round the corners of windows, or display shaded borders behind each window. (While we did have rounded corners in openbox, this was done in a rather inefficient fashion by drawing multiple frames of varying sizes for each window – it worked, but it really wasn’t elegant!)

GTK+3 relies on a compositing window manager to round the corners of tooltips; in GTK+2 this was done with a hack similar to the one we use to create rounded window frames in openbox, but this has been removed in GTK+3 and the window manager is asked to do it instead.

Mutter gives nice window opening and closing animations, and provides shading behind each window border; the changes are subtle, but they do make the desktop feel more modern.

One drawback of mutter is that, due to needing to draw the entire screen to memory before it can display it, it is quite demanding in terms of RAM, and can only run properly on a Raspberry Pi with 2GB or more. As a result, on Raspberry Pis with less than 2GB, the older openbox window manager is still used instead. (This does mean, unfortunately, that on those systems, tooltips will now have square corners. Which is another answer to the question, “so why didn’t you move to GTK+3 years ago…?”)

The other advantage of mutter is that it is a necessary step towards the future of Linux desktop environments. Desktops in Linux have always been based on the X Window System, usually just referred to as X. This is what provides the basic services of a window environment – drawing windows, moving them around, managing the mouse pointer and so on. But X is now very old technology – it was first released in 1984 – and while it has served admirably for nearly 40 years, some desktop environments are now using replacements. The most popular of these is a system called Wayland, which has recently become the window system used by Ubuntu.

We are still quite a long way from switching Raspberry Pi OS to Wayland, but one of its requirements is a Wayland-compatible compositing window manager, and using mutter is the first step on this path.

Notifications

One thing that many other operating systems now do is to provide an integrated notification system, whereby messages to the user about the system or applications all appear in a consistent and uniform manner. For this release, we have added a common notification manager to the taskbar, which can be used by the taskbar and any of its plugins, and can also be accessed via other applications.

Notifications are shown in windows at the top right corner of the screen, and are displayed in chronological order, with the most recent notifications being presented at the top. Notifications will automatically time out and be hidden after fifteen seconds, or can be cleared immediately by clicking on the windows.

The notification timeout can be configured on the Appearance tab of the Panel Preferences dialog, accessed by right-clicking on the taskbar. If the timeout is set to zero, then notifications will remain on display until you click on them. In this dialog, you can also turn notifications off completely – although we wouldn’t recommend doing this!

Currently, notifications are generated when USB devices are removed, when the power supply voltage is too low, and when the firmware detects various error conditions, such as memory allocation problems and invalid configuration options. Some of these were already being brought to the user’s attention in previous releases, but this now happens in a more consistent and user-friendly way, with more scope for future extension of the system.

Updater plugin

Another new feature, which makes use of the notification system, is an easy way to be informed about and to install system and application updates.

Up until now, this has required the use of apt in a terminal window, but it has now been brought up to date with a more user-friendly graphical interface, provided as a new plugin in the taskbar at the top of the screen.

Every time you boot your Raspberry Pi, the plugin checks to see if any updates are available. (If you leave your Raspberry Pi powered up for days or weeks at a time, don’t worry – it makes additional checks every 24 hours.) If updates are available, then the update icon – the arrow inside a circle in the picture below – is shown on the task bar, and a notification message is shown.

Clicking this brings up a menu that allows you either to open a window listing the updates (in case you want to know what they are before you install them…) or just to install them straight away.

A dialog box will show you the installation progress of updates, but they will carry on in the background and you can just continue with whatever you are doing while they install.

With security threats and vulnerabilities being found and fixed in operating systems on a daily basis, it has never been more important to keep your computer up to date – hopefully this is now as easy on a Raspberry Pi as on any other computer.

File manager

The view options in the file manager have been simplified slightly for this release. In the previous version, you could select one of four modes – thumbnails, icons, small icons and list. This was a bit of a mess – the differences between thumbnail mode and icon mode were somewhat confusing, as they involved different icon sizes as well as whether or not thumbnails were shown, and the small icon mode was more of a throwback to early versions of Windows than anything actually useful.

For this release, there are now only two modes – icons or list. The option to show a thumbnail (if appropriate) for an icon is now in the View menu. The size of icons in either mode can be controlled with Zoom In/Out, also in the View menu.

This tidies up the display options, and hopefully does so without removing any useful functionality.

KMS video driver

The KMS (kernel modesetting) driver, which was an experimental option in previous releases, is now the standard video driver in this release.

KMS is the Linux standard mechanism for controlling the connection to a display. The previous video driver was Raspberry Pi-specific, and was built into the custom firmware which is unique to Raspberry Pi computers; it was also closed source. This enabled us to make a number of optimisations for our hardware, but it also meant that any applications that wanted to directly access the display needed to be written specifically for Raspberry Pi. By moving to KMS, any application written using the standard Linux display APIs should run on Raspberry Pi without modification.

The other advantage of this approach is that display drivers for Raspberry Pi are now all part of the Linux kernel, and can therefore be written or modified by third parties; previously this code was all in the closed-source firmware. This should make it easier for the manufacturers of items like custom displays to add support for Raspberry Pi.

New camera driver

The driver used by Raspberry Pi to access camera modules has now been replaced with libcamera, a standard Linux API. As with the video driver change, this means less closed-source proprietary code, and makes it easier for third parties to develop new camera hardware and software.

For anyone who has written camera-based applications in the past, this is a very significant change, and is too large to be covered here. There will be a blog post dedicated to the new camera driver published soon, so watch this space!

Bookshelf

Custom PC magazine, which has recently been made available for free download as PDF files as well as for purchase in print, is now available in the Bookshelf application.

Other bits and pieces

As is usual with a major upgrade like this, most applications have been upgraded to the latest version; in particular the Chromium web browser is now at version 92, and has been optimised to use the Raspberry Pi hardware to accelerate video playback.

We’ve added a bunch more cities to the timezone database used by the startup wizard and the localisation settings page in Raspberry Pi Configuration – some Canadian users were alarmed that Montreal was missing… Please note that when you select a country in the wizard, you will be offered the first city alphabetically as the initial choice of timezone for that country – that’s why Belfast comes up as the timezone for the UK; it’s not a bug!

There are various bug fixes, tweaks and new language translations. The details of these can be found in the release notes on the download page.

How do I get it?

With a major upgrade, we recommend downloading a new image, reinstalling any applications, and moving your data across from your current image. Debian major version upgrades contain a lot of changes, and it is very easy for some small tweak made somewhere in the system to be incompatible with some change you have made, and you can end up with a broken system and a Raspberry Pi that won’t boot. The easiest way to create a new SD card is with the Raspberry Pi Imager tool available here, or you can download the new image from here and use a tool like Etcher to flash it to a new SD card.

If you really want to try upgrading an existing image, there are some instructions on the forums here – but we don’t support or recommend this, so be warned: you are on your own if anything breaks! Make a backup of your SD card first so you can always go back to a working system if you need to; the SD Card Copier application in Raspberry Pi OS is a good tool for this.

As ever, your feedback on this release is welcome – either add a comment below, or head to our forums.

356 comments

Good to see a new version bringing it up-to-date with the current version of Debian.
With the new video and camera drivers does this mean any changes need to be made to the user code, or have the existing user libraries (eg. python modules) been updated to work with the new drivers?

That’s a good question. I’m mainly interested in doing video/screen capture and I wonder if the new video modes means I need a different way to do screen capture using ffmpeg to make pi video tutorials.

There are a number of new applications to use the new libcamera API, such as libcamera-vid libcamera-still etc.

They are not exactly the same as the raspivid raspicam but they shouldn’t be too difficult to work out. As for libraries, there are of course the libcamera API and you can use the libcamera-app sources to learn more.

Check out David’s blog post in the next couple of days talking about the changes there

It looks like Bullseye’s migration to libcamera completely eliminates support for 2-camera work, including 360° video for virtual reality.

Currently, dual camera has not been prioritised, but it is being worked on and should be available in time. Exactly how much time is difficult to answer (because it requires upstream changes in libcamera to handle multiple cameras)

Perhaps a good reason to edit the blog to add a clear warning that updating to bullseye likely will break existing code that relies on the old camera libraries?

I am disappointed that the Desktop Preferences is locked. Can’t change the screen background and if I un-check any of the checked settings, they remain checked. Almost as it is just for show, and does nothing. Seems to have happened after a recent update.

Excellent – but what ironic timing, as we’ve currently just “run out” of spare Pi’s on which to test this! And they’re a little harder to get hold of at the moment. Hopefully we’ll get some more by the end of the week, so I can play around with Pi OS Bullseye….

The chromium get back the sync of google account?

Google Synchronisation was removed by Google in Chromium Browser, therefore it is not anything that RPT can change. Please complain to Alphabet Inc.
https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/google-to-remove-sync-support-from-3rd-party-chromium-browsers/amp_articleshow/80311592.cms

Yes, i knew that, only ask if they pack the new chromium with the sync re-stablished, in vivaldi browser there Sync but not HW Acceleration. So i will have to make a project in google Cloud with all the API in this version too, to get again Sync. Is from a tuto i follow a couple of days and works. Thanks for the answer anyway 👍

Any news on 64bit versions? Please!!!

Out of interest, why do you want a 64-bit version?
The 32-bit version allows individual applications to access up to the 4GB limit, so you can run two applications each with access to 4GB on an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4. The number of applications which actually require (or can use) more than 4GB is tiny – a couple of specialised databases, that’s about it. There may be a few situations where a 64-bit version offers a small performance advantage, but it will be just that – a small advantage. The chances are that a 32-bit version will do everything you want, and it is a tested and reliable solution.

If you still really want a 64-bit version, they are available here – https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_arm64/images/raspios_arm64-2021-11-08/ – but we still recommend the 32-bit version for the vast majority of users.

Don’t you get twice the registers in the core in 64-bit mode ? That plus registers being wider can bring rather significant improvements on some workloads.

In all our testing and benchmarking, 64-bit doesn’t offer any significant speed advantage in the majority of typical use-cases.

In nearly every benchmark I’ve run in the same Pi hardware, 64-bit tests are 5-15% faster (for things like transcoding, compressing MP3s, running Python scripts and PHP applications…).

Plus if you want to run any Docker/container-based software on the Raspberry Pi (more and more things are easier to deploy this way nowadays), there are an order of magnitude more pre-built images available in an ARM64 variety than armv7.

For desktop, general use cases, the differences are minor. And for Pis with 4 GB or less of RAM, the RAM utilization tradeoff might not be worth it, but there are a lot of reasons I prefer running 64-bit Pi OS (even though it’s beta) over the 32-bit version.

In all my testing of real use-cases (i.e. time something actually happening rather than benchmarks) the 64bit OS is actually the same speed as the 32bit OS.

Benchmarks don’t generally transfer very well to real world performance.

Even Chromium which shows significant browser benchmark improvements don’t show much improvement in time to render web pages. In fact, if you add the time it takes to start Chromium, render the youtube page and then close Chromium, the 32bit operating system is faster.

Gordon

I get 10% boost which is very useful for YT video playback in 64bit mode, RPI4 overclocked to 2350MHz. NEON SIMD unit has 2x more registers 2x the width IMO. General purpose registers are 2x the count.
Firefox – about 5GB in memory
OpenShot – used circa 12GB when exporting ourLiquid Nitrogen video overclok edited entirely on a RPI4. Unusable in 32bit mode.
GIMP – can allocate >4GB of memory for large pictures. Freuently used.
Any other application which needs memory mapped files.
FYI, per process 4GB limit is actually something like 2.3GB limit, some address space needs to be reserved for memory mapped files and kernel. Any application needing lots of memory benefits from 64bit, or crashes in 32bit when it exhausts its 32bit addressing space, and/or fragments its allocated memory.

I now use arm_64bit=1 in /boot/config.txt in Raspberry Pi OS Buster on Raspberry Pi 4 B Rev 1.1 and Rev 1.4 in order to be able to run 64 bit jobs in BOINC: e.g. Rosetta.
I also set aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu in cc_config.xml.
Is this still the right way to do it in Bullseye?

Simon, you and your team deserve huge kudos for this release (refactoring ALL desktop gui apps to GTK-3? Wow!).
I understand how sticking with 32-bit makes support-ability much more approachable for you all. I for one praise that you have taken such great steps to provide a solid distro whatsoever, when virtually all the other SBC makers pale in comparison, when it comes to software support! Thanks for using Debian as your base distro!!
I do have a strange 32-bit/64-bit quirk to mention, however. Mattermost Team server (which relies on compiled golang code) has this drastic, show-stopping performance loss in 32-bit, but no loss in 64-bit. It’s night and day. The quirk lies within golang itself (not the Mattermost code, per se), when Mattermost running in 32-bit. 64-bit is your only choice if you want to run Mattermost Team server on a Pi.

Hey Simon,

Thanks for the great update and the link to the 64-bit image!

The benefits are massive in at least one real world application. Pianoteq on Raspberry Pi @ https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq gains a significant performance boost on the ARM64 image. I can personally attest to this, as well as several other folks who have tried it:

https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?pid=973230#p973230
http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3068923/re-pianoteq-hands-on.html#Post3068923

This is a real and real-time application where the performance benefits of Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit are immediately noticeable and undeniable, in my opinion.

Thanks,
-N.

For example, I was in need of `__int128_t/__uint128_t`, which is only available on 64-bit system. Just saying…

As others mentioned, in many cases I can’t get an arm7 container but arm64 are available.

Fair enough – in that case, feel free to download an image from the link I posted above.
Do bear in mind that the 64-bit images should be regarded as beta software rather than releases; they will almost certainly have issues which are not present in the 32-bit releases. Some tweaks and optimisations haven’t yet been ported to 64-bit, and the 64-bit images are in general less well tested than the official 32-bit releases.

While it is currently beta, will there ever be a full release of x64?

I run a docker swarm, and run into the limitation of the containers only being available in x64 often.

Elasticsearch is not supported on 32 bit OS. They
only have 64 bit install packages for ARM

I’m interested in 64bit PiOS for AI.
Onnx runtime is 64bit, PyTorch is 64bit really. I have had it running on 32bit, but new bits break it (Torchvision is a problem). Tensorflow2 is 64bit.
Dlib, scikit-learn, tflite runtime work fine on 32bit.
Caffe2 (mobilenet) has got enveloped in PyTorch now so that doesn’t work anymore. It is just hard work getting 32bit AI software to install, usually some dependency doesn’t work coz its only available in 64bit.

32-bit MongoDB processes are limited to about 2 gb of data. =(

64 bit for Tensorflow 2.

Some of us want to run Swift in a 64 bit environment

Some systems using nan-boxing are not usable with 32-bit pointers, even if not much memory is used.

Some systems using nan-boxing are not usable with 32-bit pointers, even if not much memory is used. Thanks for the 64-bit link.

Why 64-bit…? Simple. Just note that Jeff Geerling commented…not what he commented, that’s just Midwest American euphemistico-academic-like double speak. What he means to say is: a lot of people would like to attempt some crazy ideas using your products that you might otherwise object to or heavily scrutinize. …BUT! Even worse, it’s clear that at least some crazy ideas do come from insane minds; except, how do you know how crazy of an idea you have exactly? What if you explain your reasoning & it turns out you are indeed quite insane?! That’s a horrifying thought (present your idea & discover you’ve lost your mind! Yikes!). So I wouldn’t exclude some degree of neuroticism as part explanation as to why… Hence, Jeff with his razzle dazzle, & all these other people with incomplete or vague reasons; that’s the reason why the level of demand for the impractical 64-bit OS continually draws your interest for a rationale but never satisfies.

So, why 64-bit?—Probably for all sorts of crazy ideas from users that: 1. want to try some ~crazy stuff out w/o revealing their true level of skill &/or w/o being scrutinized; or, 2. want to try out some really crazy stuff w/o being scrutinized & who don’t want to be discouraged & who are deeply neurotic, fearing they might be insane but are not; or, 3. want to try out some extraordinarily crazy, borderline incoherent stuff who don’t want to be scrutinized & who are deeply neurotic, fearing they might be insane b/c they are indeed completely out of their minds & absolutely are insane.

Or, at least, that’s my theory as to why…(?).

So, without trying to appease the courts.. If a chip is capable of a more recent standard, it can be taken advantage of. I have not found any proof of a 64 bit OS would degrade performance. Let’s admit that the reason we don’t have 8gb of ram in the 400 is because it would bring the project over budget. Running 64 bit could benefit some people and would not harm anyone who didn’t need the added benefit.

IIRC LibreOffice has quit development on 32-bit. So 64-bit Libreoffice apps are likely going to keep compatibility better with those in the Microsoft Office world. I know I have experienced issues with password protected files, as well as other features.

LibreOffice 6.2 is indeed the last 32-bit build offered *directly* by The Document Foundation, but Debian has i386 (32-bit) packages even for LibreOffice 7.x. 7.0 is the default version in Bullseye and 7.2 is available in the “backports”

MongoDB as of version 3.2 does not support 32-bit ARM at all, that’s a big one right there. You can in theory do hacks to workaround and compile it on 32 bit but you end up with a lot of the 3.2+ features stripped out when you do that (the backend used in 3.2+ just won’t work on 32 bit arm) that’s a big one for me.

PostgreSQL 14 on ARM 64 bit only.

There’s a bunch of software out there that is either dropping support for 32-bit arm, or doesn’t have any at all. I’m surprised and a little bit alarmed that you’re surprised by this.

For myself, I use the 64bit version of Raspberry Pi OS because there is no 32bit version of Deno (https://deno.land) and it will not compile on 32 bit versions of Raspberry Pi OS as it’s not a supported triple target (aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu) There is also no tier 1 support for 32bit arm triple targets for rust (https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.html).

We would very much like a default (recommended) 64 bit version of Raspberry Pi OS because we want to run software on the Pi that only supports 64 bit OSes (e.g. InfluxDB 2). Sure, we can tell our users to install the (less supported) 64 bit OS but we want to stick with the ‘official’ default Raspberry OS as much as possible.

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

Good to hear from an old-timer.
Your comment was probably lost on most of the group!

On the flip, and out of curiosity, why would you want 32-bit when there’s 64-bit? Is that because a lot of apps only support 32-bit? If there’s a gain in YouTube performance I’d switch for sure.

Because we want to maintain support for every model of Raspberry Pi back to the original Pi 1 for as long as is practical – the earlier Raspberry Pis have processors which will not run a 64-bit OS.

That is indeed the right thing to do. But some time in the future, non 64 bit pis need to be retired. But for that to happen the sale of non 64 bit pis will have to be discontinued and people given some grace period. So 2030? :). I hope 64 bit comes out as stable soon.

Why 64 bit for me? (1) because it is there (2) because as a system integrator, I’ve been building real world servers with 64 bit Linux OSes for close to 20 years. (Ok I’m an old guy too. ) (3) because I believe in moving to the future, not sticking to the past. My opinion? Freeze 32 bit development and concentrate on the future.

Astap for plate solving when using the pi for astro-imaging kinda requires 64bit. The database used is quite large.

It’s not the 64 bit nature of the OS that’s critical, it’s that there are packages that are only available for arm64. In my case, I need to run the Delve debugger for Go which is not available (and won’t be available) for arm7.

Not a “small amount”, but for example some of us use this to run Java applications and services for tests like Kafka or Spark. Spark uses quite a lot of RAM. That is experimentation with clusters (I have several RPi’s for that). If we have 8GB we should be using it especially that Java 17 is capable VM that may be more interesting than Python for last years for bulk processing data (consider Scala). You missed the point that developers using RPi with IntelliJ will need more memory. I made this thing work remotely to bank (job) for fun with Cisco Workspace and required security, but we may want to use community versions of tools for professional work. None of current IDE’s offered on RPi from standard repos are even close to what is used in commercial use (we can get them from commercial vendors for RPi) and so, people cannot learn tools and methods that are later relevant if they take a job. So education purpose is limited if you do not go to 64-bit.

Thanks for the update of the 64-bit version. Many reasons why a official 64-bit version is desirable have been posted already. Another example would be that 32-bit php only supports a very restricted range of dates, while your free for human history in the 64-bit version. I suspect that 32-bit version will increasingly get problems in subtle ways. Yesterday I compared a (inofficial) launcher for Minecraft Bedrock edition. The Google Playstore-login based authentication for this to work failed in the 32-bit OS while it worked on the 64-bit release. While it’s hard to tell on which level the failure occurs, it does seem to have to do with Chromium, possibly differences in the Chromium versions?

Simon, I saw your note asking “out of interest, why do you want it?”. I’ve got to return that question, been running 64 bit for awhile and I’m pretty happy with it but? You make a good point, nonetheless, however, I have to ask you, out of interest, it’s a 64 bit chip, why wouldn’t you, and the foundation, want to convert the OS to 64 bit? What’s holding back from stepping completely away from 32 bit and moving forward with what the platform is capable of?

I need 64 bit version – once I usually (have to ) build myself – such as linux containers. So, please, please, release an official 64 bit version. Thx

To meet architecture requirements like that:
https://support.torproject.org/apt/tor-deb-repo/

I downloaded the official 32 bit rasbian a day ago and immediately started running into out of memory errors at around the 2 gig mark. It looks like I need to manually update my kernel to get these 4 gigs mentioned.

I’m rewriting a book that includes an introduction to ARM assembly language using a Raspberry Pi. The current version is 32-bit (bob.cs.sonoma.edu/IntroCompOrg-RPi/intro-co-rpi.html). But I think that 64-bit ARM is a much nicer instruction set architecture for teaching, especially since students are more likely to encounter 64-bit than 32-bit in the future. For example, Apple’s M1 uses 64-bit.

I’m running 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS beta on my 3B. So far, my very simple C/C++ and assembler programs for the book are compiling/assemblying just fine. I’m using the 3B as a sort of “stress test” to see the minimum system that a student could use for my book. The only problem I’m having with the 3B is that mutter apparently won’t run, but the package manager doesn’t recognize that, so gives me an error when I try to upgrade.

I need 64-bit to run InfluxDB 2.

Screen Configuration cannot select orientation to left or right. The selections are dimmed.

Those options are not available with the KMS driver at the moment.

Out-of-interrest: why is screen rotation not possible under KMS by using Screen Configuration Editor? Was always there in Buster (and is working as expected i.e. in 5.15)

In case you missed my comment below – on further investigation today, this was actually a problem in the Screen Configuration tool, which is now fixed – expect an update in apt over the next day or so which will enable left and right screen rotations.

I have a different problem with Screen Configuration; I’ve installed the latest updated version of ARandR, and I still have the problem. I’ve posted details in the Troubleshooting board at https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323429

Python 3.9 wheels are available from piwheels.org – read more: https://blog.piwheels.org/python-3-9-wheels-for-bullseye/

What about python 3.10 or 3.11?

We only build wheels for Python versions provided by the distro.

How do I upgrade from buster to bullseye? DO I have to download bullseye for new fresh card?

I answered this question in the post – please read the section titled “How do I get it?”

Thank u. I didn’t read it.

Refreshingly honest!

I have one question. Does it wors with Raspberry pi 4 with 8GB?

Every OS release we make works with every Raspberry Pi ever made…

“Every OS release we make works with every Raspberry Pi ever made…”
By “works”, what do you mean, please?
1) This desktop release does not perform worse on a Pi 1 than Jessie, Stretch or Buster
2) This desktop release will successfully boot up on a Pi 1 but will not provide a useable desktop experience

It works in that it will start up and provide all the facilities specified. Whether those will perform well enough is down to the device on which the OS is being run. So yes, you can run Bullseye on the Pi1, Pi0 etc. The system will auto detect the system, and will turn off RAM intensive desktop features to ensure it works on lower end devices, but you cannot expect the same level of performance as on the more powerful Pi’s in the range.

We’ve done a fair amount of extra work to make sure the performance on Pi 1 is as good as it can be.

That’s not to say that it is as good as Jessie, because that had far more Raspberry Pi specific hacks to help its performance. But Eben has been our ‘arbiter of old Pis’ and we’ve made a number of last-minute changes to improve performance there.

2), clearly – Debian requires more system resource with every major release, like pretty much every other piece of software ever written. It’s not ideal, and we do our best to minimise the pain, but such is the pace of technology. But this release will boot and display a desktop on a first-gen Raspberry Pi 1 – it’s slow, but it works. Not many other hardware manufacturers can say that about hardware that is the best part of a decade old.

Bullseye doesn’t work on pi 2/3 with official touchscreen attached. That’s really sad.

Even the Pico? ;-)

Fair point! But then that’s not really a “Raspberry Pi” – it’s a microcontroller made by Raspberry Pi.

How can I change theme in Bullseye? Lxappearance is giving me segmentation fault (and that was working in Buster).

We don’t support changing theme; the system is designed to work with the PiXflat theme we supply. Other themes are not likely to work correctly, particularly with the change to GTK+3 in this release. That said, lxappearance is working fine for me on the new image, and changing theme does work if I try it. It is possible that something in your specific configuration is causing problems with lxappearance under buster.

Well, there’s definitely something wrong, since I’m getting segfault error even right after I flash brand new OS image on my SD card. I’m running RPi 3B+, if that make any difference. I’ll try Zero 2 W, once I get it in about a week, but that’s still strange, that even without installing any of my apps after the installation, lxappearance doesn’t work out-of-the-box.

For me, lxappearance seems to work as expected except for the window border settings. Any change there caused a segmentation fault.

So the pretty cantab-theme is now lost forever?

Thanks for this nice upgrade.
Legacy camera stack means that it won’t be possible to use python picamera library anymore ?
Any way to switch back to legacy camera drivers with older Pi Zero ?

Now that the new version is out, how much time do we have to upgrade until the packages for Raspberry Pi OS Buster no longer receive the bugfix/security updates (EOL
date)? Is it like with Debian Buster – the upgrades will be provided until 2022-08?
Also, I wonder, could the download page indicate more clearly what Debian version it is based on? Other than the release date, there is no indication which version one is downloading.

Raspberry Pi OS broadly follows Debian ie 3 years, there is no Community Debian LTS support:

https://www.debian.org/releases/#:~:text=Release%20life%20cycle,years%20of%20extra%20LTS%20support.

.. as my replay to Simon ‘magically disappeared’ please allow me to asked again why screen rotation ‘is not available with KMS atm’.
Just did below with the expected result (I have a display connected to DPI interface):
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ xrandr –output DPI-1 –rotate right
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 5.10.63-v7+ #1459 SMP Wed Oct 6 16:41:10 BST 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux
pi@raspberrypi:~ $

Not sure, please add to the bug report thread on the forums about this so it’s easier to direct question to engineers.

The current KMS drivers don’t support it. Not much more I can say, to be honest. Support may be added in future, but that’s not a promise of anything, and I couldn’t say when it might happen if it does – sorry!

Sorry – having just double-checked this, I was wrong. It isn’t the KMS drivers which don’t support rotation; it is the mutter window manager; if you try and load a configuration with rotation, it ignores it. We’ll have a look and see if it is possible to get it working in future.

And further, having just fiddled with it, it was actually a problem in the Screen Configuration app which was getting the mutter configuration slightly wrong for rotated screens. I’ve just fixed it – there will be a fix in apt in the next day or so.

Haha I love it – now *that’s* service :D Thanks for the ongoing work, folks – love the ecosystem.

Thanks for looking into/fixing this.

Latest arandr update seems to have fixed the rotation issue, as left/right is no longer grayed-out and now working.
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?p=1935678#p1935661

After viewing the newest video by Jeff Geerling I burned a new image for my Rpi4 B rev 1.1 with revision c03111. But the CPU max MHz is still capped at 1500.
The arm_boost is set to 1 in config.txt.

The CPU max shouldn’t have increased to 1800 automagically with the new image? or am I missing something or some extra config?
Cheers

As the video clearly states you need a COT SoC. As you have a BOT SoC you will need to manually overclock as per posts in the Official Forum.

Many thanks for the new version!!

Where can I find the official lifecycles for Raspberry Pi OS releases, please?

When will Jessie, Stretch and Buster stop receiving security updates? Stop receiving application updates? Stop receiving backports (if any)? Where can I read this on an official web page, please?

I have literally only just finished re-doing Cotswold Jam’s basic Raspberry Pi OS image from Stretch to Buster so that it can work on the Pi Zero 2 (we couldn’t afford Pi 4s so that wasn’t an issue). Now apparently that work was a waste of time and I’ve got to start from scratch all over again.

This is made considerably worse because there is no upgrade path from previous versions. I have to throw away my card images and start again from a standard release. This is not a reasonable way for the world’s best-selling computer ecosystem to operate after nearly ten years in production.

We need long-term supported releases and we need an upgrade path (even if it’s only for the “lite” / server release). I appreciate this isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s the truth.

AFAIK we follow whatever Debian’s policy is. Peter Green, who is the maintainer of the Raspbian project, is extremely assiduous about updates.

The Raspbian project will continue importing and attempting to build updates from Debian for as long as Debian produce those updates.

Contrary to what some other posters have said this *DOES* include LTS updates. It *DOES NOT* include ELTS updates as those are not distributed through the official debian infrastructure.

However note that some important packages, particularly the kernel are supplied by Raspberry Pi, not by the Raspbian project. Historically these have not been updated for previous releases once a new release is made. I do not have any control over such updates.

Also some updates may get held up by problems, I cannot guarantee any particular level of effort being put into these problems, particularly for older releases or for less well-known packages. Firefox/Thunderbird in particular are a PITA to keep updated and stopped getting updates on raspbian stretch some time ago, how supported they will be on buster and bullseye remains to be seen.

I would advise anyone running a system in a high-risk environment to follow Debian security alerts and act accordingly.

Thanks for the confirmation, Peter – and thank you for all you do.

We are looking at providing long term updates (at least while Debian supply them) for Buster. But currently we’re still discussing how this will work and how we will test and release them.

Thanks for the replies. I really do appreciate that this is an uncomfortable question for the RPi team, so thanks for the honesty and partial answers.

However, with RPis increasingly being used in long-term environments – not just in education, but for example I use RPis with Raspberry Pi OS Lite in my day-job for industrial processes – long-term support and upgrade paths are going to be an increasing issue. For example, if you’re using a CM3 module in a display system, that should be expected to have a 7-15 year life span. Railway stations do not throw away their departure boards every two years. Similarly, my shall-remain-nameless household-name industrial customer is not going to want to physically swap SD cards, or God forbid actual hardware, from the bowels of their robotic production line every other year.

These are growing pains. They are GOOD problems to have. They indicate that the Pi has moved on from plaything and educational accessory, to doing proper jobs that people rely on for years or decades. But that means that the update cycle for the OS has got to move with it.

Repeat after me: It’s a GOOD problem to have. But you still have to solve it.

Not uncomfortable at all. We sell a LOT of devices in to industry so are very aware of industrial requirements, hence the discussions internally on how best to support industrial and commercial customers. We even have a relatively new team whose almost sole purpose is to help these customers.

As I stated above Raspberry Pi OS broadly follows Debian and does not support the Community LTS:

https://www.debian.org/releases

The Blog explains who to upgrade Buster to Bullseye, unsupported though by RPT.

By the way why did it take TWO years to upgrade to Buster ?

It was actually commented in the forum that Bullseye was imminent some time ago, so if you did not research you can not blame RPT !

MW wrote:
> By the way why did it take TWO years to upgrade to Buster ?

1) Because Cotswold Jam was suspended during lockdown and there was no urgency
2) Because we couldn’t afford Pi 4s so until the Pi Zero 2 came along, there was no real need
3) Because I’m a subcontractor for a customer called Astra Zenica, small start-up you might have heard of, and I’ve been a bit busy over the last 18 months or so

(to the tune of Moana “You’re Welcome”… )

Please tell me there is a working set of .debs for kodi on pi4 or that its planned soon?

I’ve provided instruction for building here:
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?p=1935073#p1935073
should be in repo in the near future.

Thank you for the kodi build instructions and welcome news about pre built packages making it into the repository fairly soon.

Running headless on RPi4 is terrible unless i have a real HDMI monitor attached. It might be connected with only being able to set resolution on HDMI ports in this release? VNC comes up but with a default resolution on which the screen doesn’t properly fit and all mouse movements and command lag terribly. I can’t see anyway specifying what resolution the pi should be using (used to be possible with raspi-config but that option is no longer there). Sorry if I am being dozy!

Just spend a couple of quid on a “dummy HDMI” plug to fool the system into thinking that a monitor is connected. Works for me on pi-holes and an old Dell minitower that’s my headless Plex server.

Wouldn’t some config.txt tweaking fool it into booting with a fake resolution?

There is a known problem with RealVNC – they are looking into it at the moment.

I got the same issue with VNC. The lag was terrible, between 5 and 10 seconds. Have to use ssh only.

The performance issue with VNC is currently being investigated – we hope to have an update soon.

I faced the same issue with RealVNC. I had loaded Buster 10 on my RPi 4B before and RealVNC was working to my satisfaction. After I moved to Bullseye, I am practically not able to use realVNC because of the lag. Has anyone tried working with Vscode? Same lag issue or better? With Buster, I was able to work with Vscode with ease. Have not tried after I have loaded Bullseye.

Yeah, same: VNC is unusable with 5 second lag on the mouse. Also, Screen Layout Editor doesn’t recognise the screen despite “hdmi_force_hotplug=1” in config.txt, so the display is stuck on 1024×768 which is too small for some system windows. Also, probably unrelated: the menu bar overlaps the desktop (i.e. top of the rubbish bin is hidden).

I really think the VNC workflow should be added to the testing requirements! I can’t be the only one that mainly uses VNC to see the desktop of their RPi’s.

Updates today appear to have fixed this as I can now set a headless resolution with raspi-config for VNC to use when running headless. Thanks.

Looks good so far – very slick. The only glitch I have found is that some of the panel widgets have issues. The desktop pager installs but when you select another page, you get an orange screen (of death). I guess that is teething problems with switching to mutter. Maybe it is just me that finds paging between screens the best thing since sliced bread.

We’ve never supported desktop paging; it’s in there because it’s in LXDE, and we’ve never actually removed it, but it’s not something we will be supporting going forward, I’m afraid. If it doesn’t work with mutter – and it sounds as if it doesn’t – we are unlikely to have the time to fix it. If someone else wants to submit a relevant patch, we’ll happily take a look at it.

OK – after some thought about compositing, the pager would need to work in a much different way, and use a lot of memory as well. Probably not surprising that it doesn’t work – although it does make an interesting mess of the screen!

Look like I’ll not be using PI’s for much longer then. This is a show stopper for me. Do you ever actually think of the impacts on users of the dogmatic decisions you make ?

Peter, you are fully aware of how small the software team at RPi is. The only person who is actively supporting LXDE – not just at Pi, but anywhere – is me. I have been full time on this release for 9 months, getting a huge amount of code ported to GTK+3 (something you have complained about the lack of in the past) and getting a completely new window manager working as part of a future migration path, along with all the other porting and migration required for a Debian major version upgrade. It is simply not possible for us to support every single feature that LXDE had when we started working with it. The number of people who use paged desktops is tiny, and I have been very clear for several years that this is not a feature we support. We (I) can’t do everything, and it makes sense to prioritise the features which are commonly used rather than the ones which are used by relatively few people. If you want to work out why paging is broken, I will be happy to take a patch for it, but it’s simply not something we have the capacity to support going forwards. If you really need paged desktops, then I suggest you switch to an OS which does still support them such as Ubuntu.

Simon, I’ve been where you are. The only one person supporting an entire software infrastructure. In the past I asked for a backup citing “what if I get hit by a bus” company didn’t seem to care until I got a great job offer from another company. After 15 years my employer couldn’t understand why I was leaving. I had enough. It wasn’t the money either. It was the mundane working environment and lack of a future for me. The Pi organization should really get you an apprentice or backup.

After an update I tried the desktop pager again, as I am an optimist. mirabile dictu now the pages are there in all their glory! One explanation would be that the software elves came and fixed them. The more attractive explanation is that we live in a simulation and the the simulation decided it would be easier to patch our universe so it didn’t have to synthesize all the complaints about paging not working.

The best news about this release is the upcoming Wayland support :)
I’m waiting for it since I’ve seen this demo: https://youtu.be/n4oDvEuwgbA

As I said in the post, Wayland is a long way off, and it may never happen. So don’t hold your breath…

Wayland on the pi 4 already happened with Ubuntu or fedora..
On the post you mentioned that there’s open box WM on the 1 gig pi variants and mutter for the rest, the question is why not implenting GNOME with Wayland support to the 2 gig and up pis ?
You could do it on the matter of weeks probably

For a start, the GNOME desktop experience is completely different from LXDE, and we like our customised LXDE better than GNOME! So we will not be moving to a GNOME-based desktop purely to enable Wayland on some platforms; that makes no sense.

Please restore the Kodi metapackage that was working on Buster but broke the upgrade on Bullseye. Please, Kodi v19.3 is now stable.
Thank you.

What are the instructions to remove the extra packages in the 64 bit version of Rasberrypi OS (Bullseye) to configure a light weight server edition?

As far as I am aware, we have never provided instructions to do that! You’ll need to work it out for yourself – or ask on the forums to see if anyone else has done it.

You just use the Lite version of the download.

https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_lite_arm64/images/

There are actually direct links that always point to the latest ARM64 version of Lite and Desktop but you don’t need them with that link.

It is only the ARM64 Full version that is not made.

Has anyone got this working with the official touchscreen? I just get a black screen & can’t even VNC onto my 3b+, however SSH works. If I stick it in my Pi 400 it boots to the desktop without issue.

It was tested with the official touchscreen before release and seemed to work fine – might be worth posting a query on the forums to see if anyone else is having problems.

Simon, several users have reported issues. Can we get a clear set of instructions how to setup the official display under KMS? Loading the overlay seems not working.

7in DSI required some overlays for beeing used under KMS. There seems to be a new overlay which probes/detects the screen and should do load them.
As I don’t have a 7in DSI I can’t test though. As said, post in the forum section on this! Maybe you’ve been the first to find out ..

Thanks both. I’ll have a play around when I get some time later. Failing that, I’ll stick a post on the forum.

“… the Chromium web browser is now at version 92, and has been optimised to use the Raspberry Pi hardware to accelerate video playback.”
Are you sure? It still has a hard time playing back FHD, and the YouTube browsing is horrible.

Hello,
I have some bash scripts which currently use zenity to notify the user of certain actions, etc.. Is there an API I could use to access the new GTK3 notification centre? I wouldn’t

Oops. Deleted most of my last sentence there. :-)

I wouldn’t mind if I had to interface with some other language or write some small C/C++ program to handle the notification.

It’s just a system command – “lxpanelctl notify ‘text of notification'”

Excellent. Thank you very much! I look forward to trying out the update when I get a chance.

Hi PMV,
You should consider using .NET Core / Powershell Core…

I just finished a number of post about development using .Net Core and PowerShell Core
https://audministrator.wordpress.com/2021/11/14/powershell-core-scripting-gui-controls-widgets-possible-on-rpi/

More options are mentionned here
https://audministrator.wordpress.com/2021/10/14/raspberry-pi-net-core-winforms-or-wpf-possible/

I can’t test myself since I don’t have a Bullseye OS running yet…

Are the dates for the official releases from 30th October? It’s a bit confusing given the release video shows imager dating them having been released yesterday.

My mistake, the video shows an old image from 7th May.

The image date is when it was frozen prior to final pre-release testing, which was the 30th. We then released it today after a week of hammmering at it to see if it broke. Which it mostly didn’t…

Indeed, it’s been a very smooth release, and I haven’t found any problems for any of my own particular use cases, at least not yet! Thanks for the diligence in packaging it all up, and in fixing some of the earliest bugs people are finding.

Hi,
I am having a little bit of trouble updating to bullseye. I have a Raspberry Pi 4 that was running buster with no problems. Seeing this post, I transferred some files to a usb, shutdown my pi, removed the sd card, put it into a micro-sd to usb converter and pluged the converter into my mac. I then installed Raspberry Pi Imager. I first wrote Erase onto my sd card. Then I wrote Raspian Full. I removed the sd, put it back into my pi and booted it up. The boot was normal, but right when it should have opend the desktop, my monitor (Lenovo) shutdown. I could tell the boot had worked because Orca Screen Reader was on. Using Orca a a guide I shutdown the Pi and tried it a few more times. No luck. I don’t know what to do. Any tips?

Congrats on getting Bullseye “out the door”. As for mutter vs. openbox on older (i.e. < 2GB) Pis…works for me as I'm not enamored of rounded corners. Square is just fine by me.
Clearly, the handwriting is on the wall…the future of Pis won't include 1GB Pi2s or Pi3s. So unless my long term wish comes true (not counting on it), one of my major–if intermittent–uses will have to migrate to Pi4s (or later)…but only after the temporary price hike goes off.

Folks,
I encountered an issue with the Imaging Tool and Windows 11. It more or less leads you down a path where you think that your microSD cards are corrupt.
I worked with it for a while and eventually just imaged all of the microSD cards in question on a laptop that was still running Windows 10.
I don’t know if others have experienced this issue with the tool under Windows 11.

Probably best to create an issue at https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-imager/issues

It worked fine for me on Windows 11 writing Bullseye64 to a NEW USB flash card. I’ve been flighting 11 since it started and had to turn back from “official” release as it broke my activation. I’m new to the Pi and have a brand new Pi4 with 8Gb. I am awestruck by the Raspberry Team! You guys are amazing. THANK YOU!

Yeah, lxde with GTK3. I would also like to congratulate you that you used mutter. If now wayland support comes, your DE could reach many people.

Thank you for the awesome work!

A small note, the GUI toolkit was not called GTK+ for over 2 years now. The + has been removed from the name.

Congrats to ya all with the new OS.
After installing BullsEye I have lost sound to my HDMI monitor. Any ideas?
No multiple desktops any more. Not good!

I reverted to the older – more usable OS for me for now until above mentioned bugs are resolved.

Cheers

Very much agree that dropping support for multiple desktops is a big step backward. It was a bit sketchy in Buster but at least it was functional. I have apps that take up a lot of real estate, and miss the desktop paging.

I appreciate all the hard work that goes into producing a top-notch Debian fork. Well done.

First thing I noticed in my clean install of Bullseye is screen tearing in full-screen video playback, which I never saw with Buster. (I saw tearing in windowed videos with Buster, but I prefer to watch videos full-screen, so it was never an issue for me.)

I’m having this same problem, but only on the lite version. Have you found anything out?

I have installed on a Pi 3B+ and am still setting up. Looks OK.
I normally use the same image in all my Pi. Will this image use openbox on a Pi4 B 2GB or will need to configure Mutter as well?

Mutter will be used by default whenever the imaage is run on a platform with 2GB or more, so moving a card between a Pi 3 and a Pi 4 will switch from openbox to mutter. The screen resolution settings made in the Screen Configuration tool should be for both window managers, so the resolution should be correct on both.

Is it possible to force openbox on a 2GB or 4GB pi to give more free memory? Thanks for all your and the pi teams efforts to get this updated out the door, most people appreciate it. Regards.

On a positive note it is good that Bullseye ARM32 release has finally been offered.

On a negative note it seems depending on model of RPi we have differences, which will lead to confusion.

I personally believe that the RPi 4B / 400 / CM4 should only of been offered with a RaspiOS (Debian ARM64) ARM64 Operating System.

Whilst all previous models should of continued with the Raspbian based ARM32 RaspiOS, making this release 5+ year Long Term Support. ( I also disagree with the 64bit Kernel Option what a waste of resources )

This has been a missed opportunity in fully realising the potential of the BCM2711 models and shedding the insane need for backward compatibility.

It is not likely that RPT could not afford to employ 2 operating software teams, after a decade I am disappointed with the OS choices and that includes the x86 “look-a-like” which is dreadful compared to other Debian based x86-32 OSes..

This situation

This situation has left me seriously disappointed and will hold of purchasing a BCM2711 model, and will wait for the next Raspberry Pi SBC which out of the box supports a stable ARM64 release.

Getting the 32bit bullseye out, with all the multitude of changes was a lot of effort, 9 months in fact. But that effort is also applicable to the 64bit version, and we released a new beta yesterday as well. We can now concentrate on fixing bugs and testing that. We are happy that this process is the fastest route to getting both 32 and 64 bit versions. And no, a bigger team was not an option.

Fair enough, but we can beg to differ, I am sure my few $$$ will not be missed.

You can of course have your own opinion, but one would have to wonder why you disagree with someone actually working on it!

“…And no, a bigger team was not an option…”
Good call! First rule of development projects is that increasing the team size usually delays delivery and worsens quality…

The Bullseye 🎯 update is great on the Pi’s. Thanks for all your efforts. When the 64 bit version is out I plan on updating all my pi4’s to it. I do have a question. Even though the pi3B+ is only 1 gig of memory will the 64bit of Bullseye be any faster? I ask this and also will it help the new Pi 2 zero? I have noticed that Zram has greatly improved my Pi 2 zeros. It even shows the swap has more than doubled up to 1.65gb. if I plan on swapping cards with 64 bit applications from Pi’s like 3B+ and 2 zero I’m hoping that I can just swap cards and not worry that I have to have multiple images for different pi models as long as they do support 64 bit. Also will there be any noticable improvement in speed or anything for a pi 2 zero running 64 bit(zram installed) from the 32 bit version? Same question for any pi model that runs 64 bit but is under 4gig memory!

Hello everyone
Congratulate you for a new version, I’m testing it and it flows very well but I have the following inconveniences
1) when I run zoom through the chromium browser, it does not recognize the raspicam and the usb microphone.
2) when I run google meet through the chromium browser, it does not recognize the raspicam, the usb microphone is ok.
this happens with the latest version of chromium (92)
With the previous version buster, if I recognized the raspicam and the microphone, but I had to lower the chromium version to 88 so that it could work.
We have been having this problem for several months, please help.

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

I added
dtparam=act_led_trigger=heartbeat
to config.txt but this seems to have no effect.
If I run the following it works
echo heartbeat | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger

Is the aarch64 version still missing hardware acceleration for chromium and VLC?

The Debian Bullseye ARM64 based RaspiOS has not been released as Stable, this Blog relates the the Raspbian Bullseye based RaspiOS ARM32. It may be better to ask on the Forum ??

I’d like to know also if video acceleration is available in the 64bits version

are there any restriction with bullseye regarding chromium on Pi 0 W ? it wont start / keeps crashing …. this is on a fresh install of bullseye on a pi0 w with all the latest updates installed (through the auto updater) ….
I have tried with different SD cards and different Pi 0 W same results … wont start / keeps crashing

Hi Guys,
Just wondered if any of you have come across this yet. I upgraded to Bullseye last night using Raspberry Pi imager on Windows and a new SD card. All was great until I started playing videos on VLC player. It worked fine for a while but suddenly the sound from my Pi 400 vanished! It has no sound now. Not on VLC or Youtube or anything. It won’t make a sound now. It’s like the sound driver or something has vanished. I am a Pi newbie although I have good experience on computers dating right back to the ZX Spectrum. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Note I’ve now re-inserted my previous SD card with the older Rasberry Pi OS and the sound was there. So I presume it’s a software issue. Thanks in advance. You guys are great.

i tried the new RaspiOS Bullseye (“Normal” and Full) images on my RPi3B and RPi4B
and there it seems Firefox-ESR has its sound back again :D

so it has been more a problem of how PulseAudio was integrated in Raspberry Pi OS Buster…
so no Firefox specific sound problem as it has been claimed again and again (at least for this specific issue).

We’ve made no changes at all to pulseaudio for the bullseye release – the config is exactly the same as on buster. So if it now works, it was an upstream problem which has been fixed in the bullseye versions of pulseaudio or Firefox. As I think I may have claimed again and again… ;)

anyhow i am very happy to have sound in firefox-esr back again. thank you for the RaspiOS Bullseye!

After installing BullsEye I can choose only jack for audio (clicking with right button on sound icon, I have lost HDMI choose)

Hello,
I experienced the same issue. I commented out the following line in `/boot/config.txt` and sound came back over HDMI, but was lost over jack:
> dtparam=audio=on
I haven’t found a solution yet to enable both HDMI and jack outputs.

Where has the resolution setting gone? I use all my Pi’s headless with VNC and usually with 1024×768 resolution. This is normally set from display in preferences but the command is gone from there and from raspi-config.

The resolution setting option has been removed from Raspberry Pi Configuration and raspi-config because the method used for that setting doesn’t work with the new KMS driver – you need to use the Screen Configuration tool to set resolutions. However, it looks as if settings made in there are ignored if the monitor is disconnected – we’ll look into that.

“Screen Configuration” tool on my RPi4B(4GB)+4kTV seems to not doing its job. i am not possible to change the secreen resolution. the tool shows teh new resolution in the list after apply&reboot, but the real screen resolution is still at 4096×3160.
i have to disable
# dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
to change the screen resolution with Raspberry Pi Configuration.

Did the screen resolution issue get fixed, i am haing the same problem

i mean # dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d

The links are still showing an October release and image tool still the same version and grabbing that older os, where do I find the new image?

The latest release is dated 30 October. This is the date the image was frozen prior to final pre-release testing.

Thanks Simon, will get my pi’s changed over to it this evening.

After installing, both 32bit and 64bit version can’t let me change resolution, it says that i have to reboot, and then after reboot it changes the resolution for a second and then goes back to default.

Sadly still no signatures to verify downloads

Yes, there are, and there have been for years!

Go to https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/, and click on the links saying “Show SHA256 file integrity hash” next to each download link.

For Raspberry pi 4/8GB. I downloaded Raspberry Pi OS with desktop. But it doesn’t work. It is still blanking all times for more than 20 minutes. Still no available.

@Simon Long. Kindly, accept my apologized. I got RPI4/8GB working. Reasoning, I didn’t followed ur question in the post screenshot.

Thanks a lot for all the continuous and perpetual improvement your doing. I did a quick install on RPi4 , it looks good and fluid. I’m just stressing concerning the camera interface, I’m not able to run a simple picamera hello world code in python. I suppose it has to do with the new libcamera support, where could I find more info about that ? I will have potentially a lot of code to be updated … I’ll do gladly the beta-tester thanks in advance for your feedback

Lots of libcamera documentation here: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/accessories/camera.html

As a side-effect of needing to have a monitor attached for VNC to work properly, which hopefully will be fixed quite soon, I noticed that I was not getting any sound on the monitor which is HDMI. I rebooted using an SD card of previous version without any customisation and the sound over HDMI works fine there. Tried messing with HDMI settings in config.txt but no joy.

Doesn’t Bullseye work with 4K monitor?

Yes, it has been extensively tested with 4K monitors – I have been using it with one for months!

9 months of hard work on all the LXDE changes? Please people, don’t complain, but rather show some sort of gratitude, and perhaps offer to take Simon out for lunch or something (complete with his favourite beverage) if you live within range of him! He did an outstanding job for just one person. It’s an achievement for the Linux world, that LXDE was brought forward into the far-more-modern GTK-3 widget set. **People might be far more willing to write GUI apps for the Raspberry Pi OS desktop, knowing that!** This change opens the door, people.

Bless you! (The cheque is in the post… ;)
In all seriousness, thank you so much for this comment – it’s really good to know that things that are perhaps not immediately obvious to the user are appreciated; it does make all the work worthwhile.

Thanks Simon, for your acknowledgement.
I used to be a Linux Sysadmin for various software corporations for like 6 years, so I am a master of understanding the non-appreciation that end users can quite easily have (let alone complaining), even when one is gruellingly moving small mountains around, as it were, behind the scenes. ;)

Hi, thanks for your hard work. I am also having trouble with the Screen Configuration tool. Also on a 4k television (brand LG). But even after the reboot I am still on 4k resolution even though the tool does remember I set it lower. If it helps : on Buster with this TV the tool works when NOT booting into the command line. If I start the GUI with startx it has similar behaviour of auto-switching to 4k, so it always had slight issues anyhow.

This is a known bug which I am working on at the moment – it seems that some displays are not reporting their serial number in a format which can be recognised by the window manager, and as a result the custom resolutions get rejected.

I’m not sure how long it will take me to fix, but I’d hope it won’t be more than a day or two.

I am unable to set 30Hz refresh rate from the Screen Configuration tool. It appears as an option, I select and reboot when prompted. After the reboot my Monitor (Dell U3419W) still says 60Hz even though the Screen Configuration tool shows 29.97Hz.

I use 30Hz so that I can connect through a 4 port KVM at a higher resolution.

That is probably another effect of the same bug affecting monitors with a particular serial number format which I have just fixed. There will be an update in apt in the next day or so which should fix it.

Just reporting back that not only is it now working, it is even working better than it ever did in Buster when starting the GUI from the command line (startx). Thank you.

@Lucy. Mine is working. I’m using Samsung 55inch curve tv.
I do not used Screen Configuration tool. So basically, I set to font size to 18 from tv setting not RPi4.Leave that RPi 4 alone.

Thanks so much for all your hard work with this :)

Mutter is a bit too flash for me, can you give instructions to revert to non composite openbox ? Thanks

Bump – I too would prefer a way to force openbox to be used on Pis with 2GB+ memory for performance reasons. Thx for all your hard work!

What is needed is a way to setup wifi that works. I am trying to get my headless server running on WIFI cause I can’t have a cord running on the floor and even after updating network-config t doesn’t want to work. It works when hardwired but not on WIFI.

Huge thanks for all your work Simon and the Pi team!
Im relatively new to the Pi and loving it. I have a small issue with the update but looking through the comments it looks like it has been reported. Ive got a Pi4 in a Mac classic case. The LCD that i put in is a lot bigger then the crt it replace so i have to fix the underscan and change the res. My issue is in the screen configuration app, After a restart from changing from 1:8 to 1:4 view or changing the screen res it defaults back to 1:8 and 1200 by something. Looks like its probably the same issue others are having but I was told to report it anyway. Keep up the great work!!! Cheerz

In last download zip file(32bit), /opt/vc folder was omitted.
Omxplayer cannot be started.
As group of Wolfram, minecraft-pi , and vc too?

Fresh install on a Pi Zero W. First thing I tried was omxplayer, which failed with missing libbrcmEGL.so. Help?

OpenMAX is deprecated on Bullseye, please use VLC instead of OMXplayer.

Sigh, so no Bullseye for me as I’m not going to spend time rewriting code that depends on it. Would have been nice to have what’s been removed highlighted in the article, it would have saved me several hours of trying it.

1st of all, I have to thank u all for your amazing work on this release, it runs much better than Buster on my Pi4 and 3B+.

But i have to agree with the comments above about the need for a stable, fully working, release of an ARM64 version of Bullseye. It would certainly improve the experience and make the Pi even more usable than already is. Some software packages are only available for ARM64, and others, while working on ARM32, can take advantage of a 64bit OS.

We released a new beta on the same day Bullseye was released. It needs testing, but is close to feature complete. In actual fact, it provides very little increase in performance for general desktop tasks, so no real increase in usability.

Hello. After switching to Bullyes, there were some problems with VNC. There was no problem before. When connecting my smartphone as a remote desktop, there was a huge delay in control. Any pressing occurs with a delay of 5-6 seconds. What could be the problem and what ways are there to fix it?

We don’t fully understand the issue yet, but we are working on an interim fix at the moment.

Go to /boot/config.txt and comment out this lines and reboot.
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d max_framebuffers=2

I tried that but then VNC only gives a stamp-sized screen saying it can’t display a desktop. Adding resolution info to config.txt made no difference, but when I reconnected a monitor and rebooted that doesn’t come on either. So have put things back to see if an update to VNC sorts it.

We’ve just pushed a bunch of updates which will hopefully help with this – if you update your Pi, you will now have an option on the Display tab of Raspberry Pi Configuration to set the resolution for the remote desktop.

Does the x86_64 version support hardware acceleration in VLC, ffmpeg and Chromium?

Sorry, I mean the arm64 version, of course.

I was wondering how is the performance of this new release vs the previous one on lower-end Pi’s? Specifically the Pi Zero 2?

I’ve installed the new Version of Raspberry Pi OS onto a new flash drive, inserted it into my Raspi 4b and everything worked great. I completed the setup and updated everything during the initial setup guide. I tried to play a YouTube video but it never actually starts playing even if it buffers 3 minutes of video.
So I decided to restart my Pi and it doesn’t go back into the OS again. I’ve since went through the entire process again and once again after restarting, it gives me a blank screen and doesn’t go into the OS at all.

Why would this be?

It sounds as if something has corrupted your SD card somehow – I’d suggest re-flashing it and trying again.

FYI — I saw similar *behavior* due to the EEPROM being updated incorrectly, though I can’t guarantee what you are seeing is for the same reason. Here was my issue, which they fixed in Buster:
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?p=1917025#p1917025

I have just installed Bullseye and so far am very impressed; congratulations on all the hard work involved!
I installed Blender (as we use this in school on our lab of RPi) and was pleased to see version 2.8 being installed; however it does not work as the graphics does not support OpenGL 3.3 :-/
Is there any way to get the version of Blender that was available in Buster installed on Bullseye? I am assuming that there is no way round the OpenGL requirement from Blender on version 2.8…

Hi in the video, you say a ‘fresh’ install is better than an upgrade. Is there a way to list all the current s/w and convert it to an install script, so the new install will have the same progs and settings??
Thanks loads

That would be nice! I recently spent several hours going through a list of packages installed on my Buster and deciding which ones to install on Bullseye. (I haven’t used the latter for long enough to tell how successful I’ve been. I’ll also need to copy/adapt my own stuff.)

I’ve just installed bullseye on my Pi 4 8GB (onto SSD) – I’m finding virtual desktop via NoMachine is much slower than it was with buster, I’m guessing this is due to the new window manager? Has anyone else noticed this or come across any fixes?

We’ve just pushed a bunch of updates which will hopefully help with this – if you update your Pi, you should hopefully notice that remote desktop speeds are better!

Thanks, Simon – just did and update & upgrade and it pulled in about 20 packages with updates (vs this morning). Did a reboot but still the same issue with incredibly laggy response times (SSH is snappy and CPU load on top is in single digits). I’m not sure if it’s related but I’ve also noticed window headings and the top of the wastepaper bin are hidden under the taskbar across the top of the screen. I tried with a screen connected and it was much more responsive both via direct access and via NoMachine. I then rebooted in headless mode and it was again laggy. Not sure if that helps or not?

Can you try opening a terminal, running “ps ax”, and seeing if you have either openbox or mutter running – there should only be one or the other. If you have enabled the in-built VNC server, you should have openbox rather than mutter.

However, your mention of NoMachine (with which I am not familiar) makes me wonder if you are using that instead of VNC? If so, you will be using mutter rather than openbox, which causes the problem. Try just enabling VNC in Raspberry Pi Configuration (on the Interfaces tab) – enabling it will disable mutter, and will probably still work with NoMachine.

Hi Simon – yep mutter was running. Have enabled VNC in raspi-config and rebooted and as you say it is now openbox instead. The resolution won’t rescale (so stuck at 1024×768) but it is at least useable now! Interestingly my Pi 400 (running buster) is still more responsive and does scale, etc. but I can work away and see if any further tweaks I can do there – I’ll mainly be accessing it via SSH or web interface anyway so it’s not a major problem. Thanks for your help!

Speaking of mutter and performance, is it expected on a pi4 4GB for mutter to take 200% of one CPU as soon as I move a terminal (as shown by top)?
Had to switch back to openbox to be able to browse on Chromium (after having enabled all the hardware-acceleration parameters for Chromium too).
That’s on a Pi-Imager stock image + update/upgrade…

Thank you Simon.
Very happy now !

I found Teamviewer to be painfully slow on the new OS. The following fixed it for me and it runs fast and happy now.
Allow desktop to load without HDMI plugged in:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Uncomment the line: hdmi_force_hotplug=1

Save file

Install dummy monitor driver:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-dummy

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.config

Add the following and save:

Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
Driver “dummy”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Configured Monitor”
HorizSync 31.5-48.5
VertRefresh 50-70
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Monitor “Configured Monitor”
Device “Configured Video Device”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1024×800”
EndSubSection
EndSection
– Reboot the device

So I’ve installed the new update but the only thing that I’ve seen that is not working right is the theme and appearance setting or the lxappearance command in the terminal. This gives me a segmentation fault when opening. Don’t know if it’s only me or of someone else has the same issue.

I have some issues with headless operation under xrdp:

1) When connecting to a Raspberry Pi 4 via xrdp under user “pi”, openbox manager is not started. So top panel and window decoration are missing. If I add a new user, e.g. “testuser”, everything just works fine.

(Side note: if I choose “Desktop Autologin” in raspi-config, user “pi” just gets an empty screen after login.)

2) Regardless of the username, after login I always get this annoying window “Authentication is required to refresh the system repositories”.

Is there any love coming for rpd_x86 or will that version silently fade away?

No, it will continue to be maintained. But it tends to be the last thing we do in a release cycle – at the end of the day, we’re in the business of selling computers rather than providing free software for other people’s computers!
It will get a bullseye update once the dust has settled from the ARM release – we’ve got no intention of abandoning it.

Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Thanks for all of your hard work!

Intresting release but is there any way to make display compositing any faster at all? I tried the lite version on a pi 400 – and different desktops (xfce4, MATE and kde) and all proved to be very laggy and slow at window resizing. Any way to try to fix this?

I think this post should mention that `kodi` is not available (at least for RPI3)

Because I’ve marked clean install of bullseye on my mediaserver and was shocked that `package kodi is not found` in default repo

So…restoring backups of debian 10 (

Hi guys,
Just to update. The VLC audio issue I had seems to have sorted itself out on my Pi 400. Not sure how or what I did but great result. On another note, and not sure if this has already been mentioned, the Bullseye update has removed the ability for me to preview pics in a folder as thumbnails. I’ve increased the file limit size in the display preferences as mentioned on another forum but…nothing….not even one preview. On the older OS Version it mostly worked (it displayed around 90% of pics as thumbnails in a directory) but Bullseye doesn’t preview thumbnails at all for me. Has anyone come across this? Any other setting I can play with? A big thank you again to the Raspberry Pi team. Thanks for a great product and thanks for all your hard work.

You just need to enable the “Show Thumbnails” option in the View menu. This is now an explicit option rather than something, as you previously noticed, confusingly linked to icon size!

Aaaah, I’ll try that as soon as I get in tonight. Thanks for the super quick reply Simon. And thank you for all the work you guys are doing. Great machine.

Hi,
First i want to say great job with rasp os on bullseye.
please tell me will you release raspberry os desktop bullseye and when to expect it
best regards from North Macedonia
and keep on creating amazing thigs forever and ever!!!!!

To echo an earlier comment – not all RPis are just used for “messing about”, and starting afresh is not an option in a production environment. Why isn’t the ability to upgrade existing installations considered to be an essential requirement? In future, I’d hope for something better than “try this to upgrade, but we can’t guarantee it will work”. Thanks for listening.

This no update between release advice was aired many many years ago, because of the differences between Raspbian & Debian which can / does / will cause issues when newer packages are released (Debian do not support ARMv6 ARMHF). Going forward RPT have stated that they want both ARM32 & ARM64 to be more *Debian Standard* and therefore eventually release updates will be the normality, though I personally suspect that when this happens the RPi 5 with ARM64 OS will be flagship Hardware.

I have held of buying a RPi 4B until ARM64 (Debian Bullseye based) RaspiOS is released.

As I stated in another response, I believe that RaspiOS (Raspbian) ARM32 should never of been compiled to run on RPi 4..

Just to let you know that since VNC screen resolution was fixed, I can no longer connect a real monitor with VNC enabled. The monitor shuts off almost as soon as the boot starts and VNC resolves to a stamp-sized window (so only had raspi-config to play with via SSH). Only solution seemed to be to turn VNC off when using the monitor then turn it back on after it was disconnected again.

Really awesome that there is an update to Raspberry Pi OS! Is there any chance of an update for Raspberry Pi Desktop for Mac and PC? I have Raspberry Pi Desktop installed on a few Netbooks. Working awesomely and would love to upgrade to Bullseye!

There will be a bullseye update to the x86 desktop image in due course; it tends to be the last thing we do when all the rest of the release is done. I can’t promise when it will happen, but I can promise that it will happen at some point!

Great to hear! Totally fine waiting for the x86 version of your fantastic OS! Really surprised how well it works! Keep up the awesome work and thanks so much for your reply! Have an awesome weekend Simon!

For those of us who want to stick with Debian Buster just a while longer before we switch, is that still an option? I get the impression that ‘sudo apt update ; sudo apt full-upgrade’ will clobber things rather than apply recent Buster patches. This was not mentined in the article, but I think it’s important to point out. Thank you.

Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) Buster ARM32 will still be supported, just like previous releases for several months.

APT upgrade / full-upgrade will still keep Buster as Buster. Only changing Sources will change release !!

Unless you change the distribution names in your apt config files from “buster” to “bullseye”, then all apt operations will still only get buster changes. You are quite safe continuing to run sudo apt update / full-upgrade operations on a buster image; it won’t pull in any parts of bullseye.

Is it worth the effort to do the switch from Buster to Bullseye if you only use the RPi in headless mode?

Any way to force 1080p on this while connected to a 4K display? Defaulting to 4k is by far one of my least favorite features of the Pi 4. I don’t use 4k on my main PC, on a 32″ display, with an RTX 3090. Why the hell would I want to default to 4k on a Raspberry Pi (especially on the 43″ TV I use)? I’ve edited the config file, changed the resolution in the OS, etc. It keeps defaulting to 4k, no matter the changes I make.

I use three Desktops however when I open a folder a desktop that is not the first one, it does not open in that desktop but in the first desktop. So Folders on the desktop are not of use on other desktops ie Desktop 2 and 3

I wish there was a nice smooth update system like for MacOS.

I assume that’s tongue in cheek😀

I got a brand new RPi Zero 2 W just at the time this new version as released. The 32 bit version sounded logical, so that’s what I installed. However, I suspect this Gnome3 may be a bit “fat” for 512MB as running Arduino (the goal for this system) always fails with “Java heap space” and Chrome just hangs the system when it’s not the only program launched. Looking at the conversations above, I wonder if it would change anything to burn a 64bit beta image? Would it work better if I plug a SSD on the USB and define 16GB swap like I did on my Orange Pi PC2 (it’s running Armbian in 64 bits, but the RPi02W is much faster when it comes to anything graphical)? Would it be advisable to run Epiphany rather than Chrome?

Great to see. The negative comments are strange – if you are using for business you need to risk assess when is the appropriate time to upgrade and what are the benefits – as per all o/s suppliers. It is commendable that the organisation seek to remain backward compatible other companies just leave you in the lurch without support and you have to upgrade your hardware

Missing include file:
/usr/include/arm-linux-gnueabihf/sys/io.h
Under PiOS 10 its available. Bullseye can not be used as long as its missing.

OpenCV 4.5.4.28 doesn’t work on Bullseye. Any hints on this?

Mine doesn’t have Updater plugin. How do I get that?

Are we still able to use the ‘raspistill and raspivid’
commands?
I have installed Bullseye. Configured everything. I know the Pi well.
As a result of the new camera driver, does it change everything. My rPi4B can’t connect to camera in the software. I have done all the updates, upgrades, firmware checks. Guidance please on is this beta still pertaining to the camera and video? I did a day of research online and troubleshooting: even the cameras and ribbons. They’re fine.

Afraid not. Raspicam and Raspistill are no longer supported (we’ve been very clear this would have to happen – I’m sorry you missed it) and you’ll need to be using libcamera now.

If you find yourself struggling with this sort of issue, the documentation should always be your first stop for research. See https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/accessories/camera.html#libcamera-and-the-legacy-raspicam-camera-stack for absolutely everything you’ll need on the topic. David Plowman also has a blog post coming next week on the changes (and why they’re a big improvement for users), so please keep an eye out.

Thanks, Liz. Libcamera format worked nicely.

I still have problems with VNC. I see that there have been problems. There are no lags and I can set a resolution for headless usage. The VNC windows appears in that new size after reboot, but the Desktop is still 640×480 pixels an can be seen in the upper left corner. Rest of the VNC window is black. I’v set it up two times, but it’s always the same. No Monitor connected at all. All updates available installed. Any idea?

Noticed that Alt-Tab does not cycle through the open applications, but only between the last 2 apps used. Shft+Alt-Tab does work properly in the reverse order. Is this intentional? It’s makes it tough on us who primarily use the keyboard.

Is there going to be a application to add/change keyboard keybindings?

After a lot of trial and error I finally get working my Raspberry Pi 4, a 4GB model with a fresh install in a USB drive:
– Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.1
– Revision c03111 / 1.1

My issue was the following: I getting no output via HDMI after first stage of booting. I only was able to see the “-” char on the top left screen.
I comment out the following section at file /boot/config.txt

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver
#dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
#max_framebuffers=2

Since that change I’m able to see the desktop on my HDMI monitor.
Is this change disabling the new driver and using the old driver?
Have a nice day!

I had the same problem. In my case using a TV. I found that you can solve it with a TV switch off/on when the screen goes blank. Also works ok if uncomment hdmi_safe in Config.txt. Your solution works at boot but to my testing videos with VLC will not play.

Hi,
thank you very much.
I’m trying it on an RPI4B and the Chromium WEB browser does not work. am I missing any special setting? A kind of blurred window is coming up I have no chance of doing anything with it.
Thank you for any help/comment.

It seems that there is no video acceleration in VLC on Bullseye 32bit OS. Videos of 1080 resolution, of H.264 codec, drop frames and CPU usage goes to 80%. Is this expected? This was not the case with Buster.

Due to lack of availability of software I moved to Ubuntu Mate 64bit a while back. Love to move back, but only prod RPI OS 64 bit is available.

Thank a lot for this fluid OS.
I just noticed an issue trying to start blender to test performance, it complains opengl 3.3 is missing

$ Error! Unsupported graphics card or driver.
A graphics card and driver with support for OpenGL 3.3 or higher is required.
The program will now close.

Looking very good.
Did notice a bug with chromium. Tested on pi4 pi3 rpi400 and even a z2. Chromium crashes or quits unexpectedly when starting youtube, but only if previously a video has been watched. (virgin images of Bullseye used)

Need to prioritize 64Bit and hardware VP9 and AV1 GPU decoding, especially for browser.
If YouTube and Netflix doesn’t work that great I cannot use this as daily driver. You need to cater for the 99%

First, thank you guys for all your hard work. I installed and updated it over the weekend, so it took advantage of the fixes that had been made.
#1 I was able to get headless mode working immediately with no problems, and found the VNC Resolution settings in raspi-config.
#2 I like to use the Plank docking system, but it puts a thick black bar across the bottom of the screen, taking up valuable screen real estate.
#3 I can’t install Cairo-dock because of a problem with a library —
“The following packages have unmet dependencies:
gnome-settings-daemon : Depends: gnome-settings-daemon-common (= 3.38.2-1) but 3.38.2-1+rpt1 is to be installed ”
#4 I can’t install MEGASync, but that is a problem with the MEGA people, not yours. They haven’t updated to Raspbian 11 yet
#5 Under Raspbian 10 Buster, I was able to set hdmi_mode=84 in /boot/config.txt, giving me 2048×1152. Under Bullseye, changing the setting in config.txt doesn’t work. I am l limited to what raspi-config allows me, which is 1920×1080. Those extra100-odd pixels each way make using LibreOffice Writer more pleasant.
These are all little things.
Everything else seems to work — Webmin, Plexmediaserver, SMB sharing, AFP sharing, NFS sharing, Bind name server, and these are the main things I use my RPi 4 for. It also works nicely off a Toshiba XC10 SSD drive.
Thank you again.

Ok, I was able to get MEGASync working. I needed to install the libraw19 library, (libraw20 is already installed) from a Debian repository.
Once that was done, MEGASync was able to be installed, configured, and is now running.

Hey David,
I am still more less a noob with Linux but learning. How the heck did you get Megasync installed? I finally got Handbrake installed just for fun but man Megasync I am running up against a brick wall.

Anyone solve the “thick black bar across the bottom of the screen” issue mentioned here when using Plank? Seeing the same thing….

” Anyone solve the “thick black bar across the bottom of the screen” issue mentioned here when using Plank? Seeing the same thing….”

I have the same problem, but the black bar is just there when i activated vnc.

Is there a possibility to install Widevine in kodi arm64?

Hello Simon,
in LEARN CODE WITH PROGRAM WITH C.
Chapters pointers:
You possibly meant on line using the %p – Pointer or An Address instead of the %d – Integer Format Specifier.
source code:

#include
void main (void)
{
int a = 5;
int *ptr_to_a = &a;
printf (“The value of a is %d\n”, a);

*ptr_to_a = 6;
printf (“The value of a is %d\n”, a);

printf (“The value of ptr_to_a is %d\n”, ptr_to_a);
printf (“It stores the value %d\n”, *ptr_to_a);
printf (“The address of a is %p\n”, &a); // line 18
}
no comment more possible in the old post.
let me know your reply.

and is this a big number in bytes: printf (“The value of ptr_to_a is %d\n”, ptr_to_a);

Best regards

dvenadm

…. meant on line using the %p …..
meant on line 18 using the %p – correction(18)

Best regards

dvenadm

I just upgraded to the new os; love it. A little on the glitchy side, but I’m good at deglitching, so no matter. I had the previous os on mine overclocked, but this one hardly needs overclocking. I like it even more than u buntu! It is GREAT for games! I didn’t know a raspberry pi 4 8gb could possibly be soooo fast! I use a raspberry pi for my main computer because it is third party, and It does not have all the extra over-heating hardware that a normal laptop does. My laptop overheats when I play these games like sauerbraten. Technically, now, the raspberry pi 4b with a ice tower heatsink is more powerful than an hp pavillion!

Why is taskbar always set to DEFAULT??? Every time I switched monitor mode: powered-up and rebooted. Why is that?

Doesn’t look much different. Which is fine with me. I recently switched to the 64-bit version of Raspberry OS and I Don’t Like it because it is buggy, whereas the 32-bit version was stable, stable.
I am very disappointed that Raspberry OS is so far behind, Gtk+ 4.0 isn’t even readily available to install. Half or more of the functions described online have been deprecated, yet I struggled to find working replacements.
It would be great if Raspberry OS would include Gtk+ 4.0 Before Gtk+ 5.0 is released, likely 10 or 15 years from now.

I don’t have HDMI audio available as an option in raspi-config on a fresh install of Bullseye Lite on a new rPi4. On Buster it works fine. What am I doing wrong?

Very impressive upgrade. A tiny point: I miss the eyedropper for selecting colours that was available previously in Desktop Preferences > Taskbar. I could blend the taskbar background into my backdrop with it.

Audio does not work on my Pi4 and CM4 with the newest release. Clean installs with updates. Please fix issues.

Hi, i often use remote access to my raspi. But “xrdp” doesn’t work. I didn’t find a workaround.

Why is the swap file not set to 0 or dphys-swapfile swapoff not run at boot ?

I used the Raspberry Pi Imager to write the Bullseye image, and it seemed to be successful. But when I tried to boot my RPi 4 (8G) I repeatedly got the rainbow screen followed by a message saying it was resizing the space and would reboot in 5. Which it did, but then, when it was rebooting, the rainbow screen flashed up briefly, followed by a black screen, then a shutdown. I re-imaged, using a different SD card, with the same results. I re-imaged again and attempted to boot another RPi 4, but the same sequence occurred. I re-wrote the eeprom, making sure the green light on the RPi was flashing, re-imaged a card, and once again tried to boot it up — with the same result. Disappointed, I went back to Buster. Oh well…

So are all previously sold DSI screens (including those of third parties) unavailable?
In addition, there is a screen called “Raspberry Pi Touch Display” on your website. Can it be used?

Buster uses samba 4.9.5, Bullseye uses 4.13.13; to connect to shares from Buster I had to use vers=1.0 which has been turned off in Samba since 4.11.
now all connections from buster to bullseye connect as root with RO.
Do I have to upgrade all my Pi to Bullseye? can I/should I upgrade Buster Samba to 4.13.13? is there another solution?

A little further investigation indicates that mount.cifs in Buster needs upgrading which needs a kernel re-compile that I am not excited about doing.Are there other options, as it looks as if I am being forced to upgrade all my Pi to Bullseye, and using NFS during the transition

The official 7″ LCD is supported in Bullseye but need an additional line in /boot/config.txt
# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver
#dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-dsi-7inch

Change that and reboot…et voila the screen works !

nearly a month off the shelf, and already creating a new Buster image like Dean. I’m pushing a 3B+, and bullseye seems to have too many quirks not caught before the release.. these quirks like a broken path, kinda make the new release not for the beginner (I’ve had my 1B’s (256mb & 512mb versions) since 2015, and 3B+ for 2 years, but I still consider myself still a newbie.)

anydesk NO funciona con debian 11 Bullseye

Some third-party software will need updating (as is always the case with OS updates).

Problem with text editor! If you open a txt file which is updated by an application the editor loops in the update or cancel screen!
NB Iam likeing this version, I have print sreen here! tks

When will the bullseye repository be available for deCONZ?

Is lamentable in this version that gpio function has been excluded! Normaly fuctions old version are keep, and or to increase. The Rpi was created for iot, or no?
Many sensors and modules supported by gpio cl, library etc not works!!!! And whats the solution? I think that raspbian buster is 100% to be used like base for this version…

Expanding the boot partition lime always causes an unbootable SD card. Tried 3 times. Went back to Buster. Success like many times before.

An odd example: Hercules emulating Z/architecture (for example, to run 64-bit Linux – I gather that some of the work on that is done under Hercules, since most people don’t have a mainframe in their spare room), while it can run on 32-bit, is said to perform better on 64-bit; presumably the wider registers and ability to address more memory both help. It would much amuse me to run mainframe code on something the size of a cigarette pack – even if it wouldn’t be all that fast.

My last three phones run 64-bit. :-) Seems like 64-bit should be getting more and more attention, and 32-bit should be getting a bit less, although still security and stability fixes for some time.

The new 2021-10-30 version of Raspberry Pi OS Lite may have some improvements, but contains many bugs and removed reliable software. I strongly recommend to stick with the buster version, still available at https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_armhf/images/raspios_armhf-2021-05-28/

Please put back the option to download Buster image, and to Raspberry Imager as well. Some apps with real world hardware still depend on it.

I have updated my raspberry pi this weekend to bulleye. (Raspberry 4 model B).
since then , I loose wifi connection every 30 sec to 2 minutes… it’s always reconnecting…. any patch available… it not usable anymore…..

many thanks

Same issues for me…infact I am not able to use the onboard WiFi with Bullseye and RPI 4B. I faced issued with WiFi connection for the 4B hardware in general, even with Buster 10. But with Bullseye, it is worse. I am using an USB dongle for WiFi as a work around.

Anybody else seeing any issues with Bluetooth? I am using Pi 4 (4g / older proc) model and having sporadic issues with discovering/pairing and re-connecting to devices. Especially a (very old to be fair) Apple “Might Mouse”. Running “hcitool scan” directly doesn’t seem to pick up devices I know are out there – re-running it several times – I will see (some) of them. I thought it was my board/location initially – but I happened to boot up “Twister OS” – and everything worked really well. So just wondered if anybody else seeing issues with Bluetooth on this release.
Well done and thanks for your efforts on the new release by the way – by and large – everything working! And I like the new auto-update mechanism!

Blender not working on Rasbian os bullseye. Blender 2.79 was running in the old version. But on the new Bullseye, 2.83 has arrived, the installation is completed, but it does not work..

Bullseye sound does not work for me thru HDMI as it had on Buster. This has been reported on the forums. Bullseye sound only works for me via the audio jack on 4B/8GB.

The “fix”: Right click on the Speaker icon.
Then select “Audio Outputs: HDMI”.

Howdy!

Just update the 400.

Now it is bricked.

Power light comes on but no display.

Wondering how to log in with no display.

Is there a key sequence to cycle screen resolution or graphics card?

Thanks!

Jack

@Simon: Is there any documentation available how to invoke the notification feature from a third party program – if it was meant to be a feature not only to be used by “the system”? BR, Ralph

I don’t know if you saw – but buried back in the comments on this thread is a note from Simon about how to send notifications yourself (I tried it – and it works for me) – search for “lxpanelctl notify” – not sure if that is what you were after?

Well, I installed rpi os bullseye today, updated/upgraded. There is NO VPU acceleration out of the box on Chromium 95. It worked just 1or 2 weeks or was false advertising?? Amazing! Haha

Also, wayland is a must on this potato. With the horrible hw you are dealing, X11 is a no go. The glmark2-es2 performance is horrible comparing the results with wayland glmark2-es2, just a demo on how bottlenecked the gpu is bc of ram bandwidth.

If you are willing to call this a desktop pc you must move toward that. It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. The mesa driver can’t do magic.

I’m still having trouble getting VNC on a headless system working. The viewer is correctly filling out my display at 1920×1080 but the image fills only the upper left side of the screen (640×480?). I’ve set headless resolution to 1920×1080.

Is there a fix for this?

try “sudo raspi-config” and select display options and screen resolution

rpi 4 on bullseye not able to start boinc client with boinc manager sorry
…not sorry

You might try:
sudo systemctl enable boinc-client
sudo systemctl start boinc-client

Now yes!!!!
more performance,my rpi2b is rocket! very good,after last updates, the bullseye is more stable , videoexec ,loadcpu, tempcpu,timeanswer, is excelent, all in overlclocking hahaha! PS: I installed it on pi zero and too is good!!!!
NB, gpio contorned with pigpio

I just downloaded last update from 64 bits and bulleye file is corrupted. https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_arm64/images/

Bullseye 64bit seems to crash frequently (Nov ’21 build) – the machine just freezes. Looking in the syslog it is always near the time of PackageKit and NTP events.

Bullseye 64bit crashes look to be more specifically to do with NTP syncs. Is anybody else getting the same system hangs? See the Pastebin link (https://pastebin.com/nYevFeiV) – PackageKit was definitely disabled and not running this time. RPI is outputting to 2 4k monitors fwiw.

Hi All,
I have a Raspberry Pi 4b (4GB) model. Using a 16 GB microSD card. So far, with Buster 10, it was okay for me except occasional troubles with WiFi, which was bearable and could get some work around. Now when I switch to Bullseye 32-bit version, I am going through a hail for the last two days. Imaged the uSD card with the RPi Bullseye 32-bit image. Let the system bootup. The WiFi does not work with the highest resolution. I had to reduce the resolution for the WiFi to comeup. Again, just to switch to a more reliable method, I used an USB dongle for WiFi, which uses Wlan1 and apparently works ok with lower resolution. But as soon I upgrade the firmware as the system pops up about the updates available, it takes almost 30 minutes or more for me upgrate, but after reboot, the the screen stays blank…does not complete booting up. Did this whole process almost 3 times so far. Did not find a suitable resolution for this yet. Any suggestions please? I am not a Linux expert, merely a beginner.
Regards,
Sanjib Acharya

Just to say I appreciate the efforts.

Raspberry 2021-10-30-raspios-bullseye-arm64.zip
image is CORRUPT.

I got that warning too in balena etcher. I think I’ve installed enough times to know not to trust tech (or myself), I just ignored the warning and plugged the sd card in anyway and it worked

Will these upgrades to Bullseye allow us to use MS Teams for online school classes ?

Dear Simon Long!
I applaud you for your unending patience in replying to the questions, comments, nitpicking and whining. The Foundation is doing a wonderful job and we are thankful for it.

Great job on bullseye! Am using 64bit version on pi4 4gb. Mutter is awesome with LXDE. Had a few graphical glitches when window borders met LXpanel, but they stopped after I applied overclock. Have enabled edge tiling for mutter in gsettings and it works beautifully!

I lately installed the latest 64 bit version and rolled on all the updates. I’m impressed with the new features especially the improved quality of video. I hoped the keyboard language changing bits would be updated but instead I was not able to add the Russian keyboard layout because the old trick with manual updating of the /home/pi/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel file didn’t work anymore.
Is there at least a workaround for setting this up?

speedtest does not work on Bullseye. Haven’t tested other products. Transmission works fine.

The gpsd package along with libgps seem to be broken in raspbian bullseye at at the moment. I upgraded to bullseye to get the latest-and-greatest interface to gpsd, but this has not stopped working. I suspect the issue is the bug the gpsd people have now fixed, which hasn’t been propagated to the current bullseye

For Raspberry Pi 4 running Mutter WM –Will you be restoring normal operation of Alt Tab with icons and selection of any open window ? Will you be restoring capability to add custom keyboard shortcuts ?

Hi,
I have just updated my PI4 8Gb to Bullseye to try it out.
I have had trouble detecting the second TV but finally got two displays to work, However the second TV does not display a picture no matter what I select in appearance settings. The taskbar will move between TV’s, I can move applications onto the second TV. So it does work, just curious as to why I can’t display an image.
If I revert to my Buster SD card then I get an image on both TV’s, so I do not believe it is a problemwith my hardware configuration.

Steve

Am I the only one who needs the List vies in File manager? Most of the times I don’t want the details view. This makes it very difficult to browse a large folder like etc when you are just looking for a particular file like rc.local (yes I know you can type part of the file name). Is there an option I am missing somewhere?

When release this for x86 as iso?

I am not a Linux expert. Installed bullseye on 32gb card using pi zero 2W.
Image on TV screen will not show taskmaster (a bit vital this)
Why? And how can I fix it?

Sorry, should have read ‘taskbar’.

No taskbar in root desktop on Bullseye! When I upgraded from Buster to Bullseye I was disappointed that the taskbar was missing from root’s desktop, although the new_user’s desktop had one. I normally run headless, but plugging in a monitor showed the same problem. After expending considerable time, effort, and aggravation, I found and solved the problem: the ‘panel’ file was missing from /root/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/. The fix: cp /home/new_user/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel /root/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/.

Why on earth are you running the desktop as root? That’s a really bad idea for all sorts of reasons, and it is likely to cause some really weird behaviour.

We don’t configure any part of the desktop to run as root, and it’s not a bug that it doesn’t.

It’s a bit faster.
Very unhappy that multiple desktops/desktop paging is not supported. It was sketchy in Buster but at least it was functional. I did use it, now have to cram everything on one desktop…like Windows 7….yuck.

I’ve been running 64 bit Bullseye on most of my Pi 400 and 4’s with 4 or 8 GB RAM and am very pleased. My use cases don’t include camera so I’m unaffected with this negative issue. I love the ability to easily set the default headless resolution for remotely running desktops with Bullseye straight away. One thing I do with both Buster and Bullseye is LXC (containers). These work pretty well except for setting resource limits on each container. The containers allow me to quickly evaluate a desktop I otherwise wouldn’t run. A couple of examples are Xubuntu and LXQT running as containers and accessed through x2go from the Raspberry Pi desktop. Maybe not a practical use but I enjoy this along with more practical container uses.

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