10 Alternative Raspberry Pi Operating Systems

the Raspberry Pi is one of my favorite computers ever a single-board machine that you can fit in your shirt pocket it costs less than a videogame to buy and with the latest Raspberry Pi 4 it can now be clocked up to 2 gigahertz with a quad-core arm v8 processor what is not to love now I've done videos on the Raspberry Pi before it's no secret that I'm a massive fan in fact I've probably got around 6 or 7 different models around the house and although the official Raspberry Pi OS is decent as a Linux distribution and a lot of people just stick with that or they'll run something like OS MC or Libre elec if you want to use it as a media center today though we're gonna have a look at a few of the lesser-known options and exploring some alternative operating systems that you can try on your Raspberry Pi and I'm mostly going to be using the Raspberry Pi for model B for this video but a lot of these operating systems I'll be demoing should work fine on the Raspberry Pi 3 as well so let's kick off with something a little bit quirky raspbian XP now if you're not stell j't for the days of Windows XP or even Windows 95 try these custom Debian based distributions from the PI lab complete with the classic bliss wallpaper and an imitation of the lunar theme or at fisher-price windows as we used to call it back in the day it has a few features that will make Windows XP fans feel very at home including a Start menu a Windows Explorer style shell and icons and it also includes lots of pre-installed open source and free software including Libre Office which works as a full microsoft office replacement and is bundled in this distro and there are also a bunch of emulators installed which means all you have to do is drop your roms or your image files in of your favorite retro games and they're pretty much good to play straight away including systems like the Super Nintendo and 64 Gameboy dos MAME arcade emulator and even the Sega Dreamcast and they also bundled box 86 which means you can play a lot of classic PC games on here too running on the Raspberry Pi 4 the speed of all the bundled emulators is actually pretty decent and it's actually playing Dreamcast games and a mostly solid 60 frames a second and one of my favorite features is the included Windows 98 emulator in this package now this runs on the qu mu or creme u platform and it is essentially a fully setup windows 98 environment and you can launch it directly from the raspbian XP desktop while admittedly it doesn't exactly fly in terms of speed it probably is comparable to the Pentium 2 machine that I used to run this on back in the day and that they've installed a few classic games that you can play here as well very cool now having a network attached storage device or a NAS drive on your network is very handy and the Raspberry Pi 4 makes a very affordable home solution if you want to roll your own storing all of your documents pictures movies and music that you can then stream across to your network to any device in your house is very useful indeed an open media vault is designed primarily to be used by small offices but it's very simple to control and install on your PI at home all you do is attach your storage and then administrate it from a simple web interface and you're good to go a really simple and powerful way to set up a small home nest drive without needing a lot of complex networking knowledge now I'm really gonna be showing my age here but when I was a kid most home computers booted into basic when you first turn them on a programming language that was designed to be easy to use and it was great to get kids into coding Echigo jam basic brings that back to the Raspberry Pi and allows you to run the version of basic designed for the Echigo jam kids PC just download it onto an SD card and then your PI will boot straight into basic just like its predecessor the BBC micro used to back in the day and this is great if you've got kids and want to get them into programming there was actually a programming network that they can join and share their projects online very cool volumio is an open source audio file music player and it's designed to play all of your music in high quality from any device with a browser now this is designed for people who really care about audio quality and it was made to offer up high quality uncompressed audio streams reliably but also it's very flexible it can act as a single digital audio player for all of your music on your network drive mp3's FLAC WAV AAC and a lot more as well and you get UPnP DLNA support airplay spotify and web radio stations all in one place you simply host it on your raspberry pi and then access it from across your network using the very intuitive web interface the commodore amiga is my favorite platform of all time and if you watch my channel regularly you'll be well aware of that fact and luckily it's getting easier by the day to emulate your old amiga setup on a Raspberry Pi Emmy Barry is an optimized Amiga emulator for ARM based systems and it brings you the highest performance Amiga emulation be a classic Amiga 500 at 1200 a CD 32 or even a higher-end model equipped with a 68 Oh 40 and a graphics card it really does cover it all and I'm running the brilliant PI Amiga PAC on top of there now this is a 30 gigabyte pre-installed image and it comes bundled with a load of games demos programs and lots more as well saving you the hassle of tracking everything down and installing it all yourself all you have to do is supply your own kickstart roms which can be bought from clan tow for a couple of euros and then it boots straight into the Amiga workbench for hours of endless Amiga retro fun the original arm operating system and something that is very nostalgic for me and probably for most 90s kids who grew up in Britain as this was the operating system that we used in school originally born on the Acorn Archimedes computers and first released in 1987 it was designed to run on the then-new arm chipset which stood for acorn RISC machine and it lived inside the acorn archimedes computers so it's really got a long interesting history but with the Raspberry Pi essentially being made as a modern-day a cod inspired machine RISC OS was one the first operating systems that its creator eben Upton wanted on the PI and you can actually hear more about that on my interview with eben on my retro gaming podcast and RISC OS is still in active development with modern features like a package manager and Internet connectivity built in and lots of applications that you will no doubt remember from back in the day at school RISC OS has always been a very solid and well-designed operating system and despite the over-reliance on using the middle mouse button which feels a little bit unnatural to people who've never used it before it is a really interesting OS to try out and it runs great on the Raspberry Pi 3 with a beater in the works that fully supports the PI 4 hopefully that'll be coming soon and as someone who always enjoyed using the acorn archimedes and was a big fan of RISC OS as a kid it is lots of fun to be able to experience it on an affordable platform like the PI now if you're technically enough to be watching this video I'm sure that you're familiar with Chromebooks but you can actually turn your Raspberry Pi into a Chrome desktop machine with chromium OS now this is in the open-source version of Google's Chrome OS and if you haven't tried it before essentially the entire operating system runs within the chromium web browser and after doing some initial setup and signing in with your Google account you're then greeted by it's very minimal user interface and the majority of the screen is dedicated to running the browser and at the bottom we have a section that expands to launch your most-used web apps and the ones i've got in here are all Chrome extensions there's also a section for exploring your downloaded files which of course you can also link to your Google Drive and applications are installed from using the already familiar google chrome store and there are some very basic settings that you can do and customizations for example changing your backdrop wallpaper but apart from that it really is just the chromium web browser running at boot but it is great if you want a really minimal system with little setup and of course it makes a perfect operating system for a kid's machine where there's not much to break Gen Pi 64 is a 64-bit version of genteel Linux for the Raspberry Pi and actually it runs a really nicely on this Raspberry Pi 4 and what I love about this distribution is that it comes with heaps of pre-installed software that's all set up to run straight out of the box including graphics applications the LibreOffice open source office suite that is of course compatible with Microsoft Office they've also bundled the Kodi Media Center all set up and ready to configure and run and getting started with it is really simple all you have to do is write the image onto an SD card and then you're good to go if you're not Elgin for your childhood console or maybe those long lazy Saturday afternoons that seem to last forever in your local arcade retropie lets you relive those days in this really slick and powerful all-in-one retro gaming system bundled with lots of emulators for many classic systems it really is a case of just supplying your own wrong files and then launching them from this very intuitive menu and it can emulate all kinds of classic consoles but my main use for this is for the brilliant name arcane emulator launching all these incredible old-school arcade games from the menu and having all of the arcades the east to pump your parents money into as a kid ready to play for free any time at all and it really is something that would have blind my ten-year-old mind as a kid and I've got my Raspberry Pi 3 inside a monster joystick for that real arcade stick feel now it's actually made with genuine arcade parts and it makes a really nice way to experience these classic games and you can even hook the PI up to a retro CRT monitor for that real authentic arcade feel and of course you can plug in extra USB controllers for multiplayer games but having all of these games on a system that fits in your bag that you can take around your friend's house is is just incredible and next we're gonna check out possibly the most alternative operating system that you wouldn't expect to be able to run on a Raspberry Pi and I just wanted to take a minute to say a big thank you to my good friends at Nord VPN who have made this video possible now more than ever we really value our online privacy and using incognito mode in your browser really isn't a solution did you know that even in incognito mode your internet service provider can still see everything you do online and there are even horror stories and ISPs selling your personal data to advertising companies plus with lots of us having been in lockdown over the last few months you might have completely exhausted your local Netflix library but using Nord VPN you can connect to other Netflix service around the world and check out content that you can't watch on your local service Nord VPN reroute your internet connection through their superfast servers and with double data encryption on all of your data that means you're fully protected at all times you can even connect when you're traveling on public Wi-Fi in coffee shops or at the airport and it works with most operating systems including your smart phone they've got unlimited bandwidth no data logging so really there's no excuse for you not to be using it and it's so fast you can actually just leave it connect in the background and forget about it he'd even realized it you've got it on and they also improve your online experience with their cyber sex suite which blocks ads and protects you from malware and other online threats now not VPN have been kind enough to support this channel and and really appreciate it if you took advantage of this amazing offer and get 70% of the normal price of an Ord VPN subscription that means you're paying just 3 dollars 49 a month and they've generously given you an additional month completely free now all you have to do and of course you'll be helping out the channel by doing this is head to this website right now Nord VPN comm forward slash Dan would use my name so they know that I've sent you as an exclusive promo code to claim this massive discount and to Dan word in the promo code books and protect your online activity today with the only VPN to get all the green checks on PC Mag our good friends at Nord VPN all right then and number one the most alternative operating system to run on your Raspberry Pi and it is Windows 10 now this is something a little bit quirky and not really usable at the moment but it is actually possible to run Windows 10 on your Raspberry Pi now this is due to the fact that Microsoft actually make an ARM version of Windows 10 and the PI community have with their genius managed to get this working on the Raspberry Pi 3 and with a bit more effort you can also make it work on the PI 4 but that is kind of a work in progress at the moment and I've managed to get this up and running with USB supported on my Raspberry Pi 3 now you got to remember this really is a proof of concept at the moment and there is quite a long involved process to get it downloaded get it built and then the setup takes ages to get up and running as well and then when it does the entire thing is extremely slow and I mean clicking an icon it can sometimes take several minutes before it appears navigating the system is really slow as well and to be honest it's nothing that you're gonna use in day-to-day life but the fact is that it does actually run and as more powerful Raspberry Pi systems with faster CPUs and more RAM eventually come along in future years the foundation has already been laid so over the next few years it could become a realistic operating system to use day to day on your pie but for now it's a cool experiment to try out with a lot of future potential so if you want to try it out for yourself I'll link up a guide in the video description say can give it a go let me know how you get on so there you go 10 alternative operating systems you can try today on your Raspberry Pi now this is by no means meant to be a definitive list so if you've got any suggestions of operating systems that I should try out and love to hear about those in the video comments and did you know that I also do a weekly retro gaming podcast every Friday the retro hour available from all your favorite podcast clients or you can download it directly from my website the retro hour calm and you might find the interview that we did with the father of the Raspberry Pi Evan Upton really interesting there wasn't released a couple of weeks ago you can check that out on all the other episodes on the website right now at the retro hour calm and while you here on YouTube here's another video of mine you might find interesting and if you'd like to see more videos like this from me please consider supporting the channel on patreon and I'll see you in the next bed

Channel: Dan Wood

Views: 217,576

Keywords: alternative operating systems, raspberry pi operating systems, uses for raspberry pi, alternative to windows, operating systems 2020, linux, retro, retro gaming, 80s computing, 90s computing, operating systems, operating systems list, raspberry pi oses, os, lgr, dan wood, lunduke, retropie, retropi, riscos, chromeos, chromium os, windows 10 on raspberry pi, things do with with raspberry pi, raspberry pi 3, raspberry pi 4

Id: 1jrVyFEvYT0

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2020