The ever increasingly popular Linux distribution Pop!_OS is coming to Raspberry Pi and ARM devices later this month, as the principal engineer, Jeremy Soller, has updated the Github repository with a section for the incoming Pi image. It does seem that it’ll only work on Raspberry Pi 4, which is understandable as the tiny single-board computer is the only one with the hardware capable of doing anything further than the official Raspberry OS.
In the tweet, you can clearly see the system being used is a Pi 400!
It’s not the first Linux distro to hit the Pi, as Ubuntu (which Pop! is built off of) has a variation called Ubuntu MATE, a lighter-weight version of the main distro that is optimized for the GDP line of handheld PCs but also supports Raspberry Pi.
While I love the Raspberry Pi for projects like a makeshift Ring doorbell and camera shenanigans, the Raspberry Pi 4 still fumbles at anything more than this. Its version of Chromium struggles to play video and such, so I hope an alternative operating system can pump some magic back into the hardware while we anticipate the Raspberry Pi 5.
Of course, the full OS is available as an alternative to Windows and other Linux distros, plus seems to be the friendliest outside of Elementary, which System76 – the team behind Pop! – include it on their own hardware, such as their huge push into powerful desktops with the Thelio, which comes in variations all the way up to a Threadripper and a colossal amount of storage.
System76 also do mini PCs and laptops, which come in a variety of flavours, but you can’t beat that walnut wood panel finish on the side of their desktops. So smooth.
We’ll be sure to take a look at the operating system as soon as it’s available, which you can keep an eye on in our Raspberry Pi hub!
