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Software & Distributions:

Software - an overview.

Distributions - operating systems and development environments for the Raspberry Pi.

Kernel Compilation - advice on compiling a kernel.

Performance - measures of the Raspberry Pi's performance.

Programming - programming languages that might be used on the Raspberry Pi.

Overview

What is armhf?

The Debian Squeeze image originally issued by the Raspberry Pi foundation as the recommended distribution used "soft float" settings. The foundation felt necessary to use the existing Debian port for less-capable ARM devices due to time and resource constraints during development of the Raspberry Pi. Therefore, it did not make use of the Pi's processor's floating point hardware - reducing the Pi's performance during floating point intensive applications - or the advanced instructions of the ARMv6 CPU.

The official Raspberry Pi distributions are now optimized for ARMv6 and for "hard float" which should have better performance on certain CPU intensive tasks.

There is some information on the news groups that "hard float" optimization can speed up floating point operating up to 10x, please read detailed discussion on the Raspberry Pi forums.

What are ARMv6 and ARMv7?

Read more here.

Comparison

Available ARMv6 Distributions

Fedora Remix

The Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix is a Linux software distribution for the Raspberry Pi computer. It contains software packages from the Fedora Project (specifically, the Fedora ARM secondary architecture project), packages which have been specifically written for or modified for the Raspberry Pi, and proprietary software provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation for device access.

V2 Cloud

The V2 Cloud image is designed for the Raspberry Pi 2 to make it a thin client to access a cloud-based Windows virtual desktop. The image is based on Raspbian and contains an interface to remotely access a virtual desktop over the Internet with USB redirection.

Debian (Squeeze/6.x)

http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/

Debian was the default distribution on the Alpha boards. Boot time depends on width & speed of SD-card. Alpha board boot into Debian prompt (no GUI) was timed taking about 34 seconds.

The Debian distro for Raspberry Pi is the Cambridge reference filesystem, which is a fully functional Debian Squeeze installation containing LXDE (desktop) and Midori (browser); development tools; and sample code for accessing the multimedia functionality on the device.

Lampone Pi

Project home

Lampone Pi is a live Debian GNU/Linux Buster arm64 operating system for the Raspberry Pi microcomputer boards. As of 2020-06, it’s the only live operating system for the Pi. Although it is not affiliated or derived from Raspbian, it’s the homologous of Raspbian Lite (they both derive from Debian), but differently it’s a 64bit live OS.

Technically it’s a Debian arm64 derivative with a unique partitioning scheme crafted for maximizing the strength against filesystem corruption: the ISO9660 system partition is read-only by design at filesystem-level. The data persistence partition contains only the delta: system updates and your data lay there.

The data partition mounted on top of a read-only system partition makes the resulting operating system resistent to filesystem-corruption. Moreover, you can do complete system backups by just tar-ring only the files contained within that partition.

Arch

Arch Linux ARM is based on Arch Linux, which aims for simplicity and full control to the end user. It provides a lightweight base structure that allows you to shape the system to your needs. For this reason, the Arch Linux ARM image for the Raspberry Pi does not come with a graphical user interface, though you can easily install one yourself. Please note that the Arch distribution may not be suitable for beginners.

Arch Linux ARM is on a rolling-release cycle that can be updated daily through small packages instead of huge updates every few months.

Raspberry Pi 1

Raspberry Pi 2

Raspberry Pi 3

More information is available at http://archlinuxarm.org

Raspbian

Raspberry Pi + Debian = Raspbian. Initially a project to create a hard float port of Debian Wheezy (7.x) armhf for the Raspberry Pi. The intent of Raspbian is to bring to the Raspberry Pi user over 35,000 pre-built Debian packages specifically tuned for optimal performance on the Raspberry Pi hardware. The project was completed in June, 2012. However, Raspbian is still under active development with an emphasis on improving the stability and performance of as many Debian packages as possible.

For newcomers the images provided by the Raspberry Pi foundation are recommended; these are available from the Raspberry Pi Foundation's download page.

In September 2015 the Foundation released a new image based on the Debian Jessie release. This has quite a number of changes to the Debian Wheezy release.

The same image is used for the earlier Raspberry Pis (ARMv6) and the later Pi2 (ARMv7).

More information is available at http://www.raspbian.org

DietPi

DietPi - Minimal Raspbian Image

At its core, DietPi is the goto image for a minimal Raspbian/Debian Server install. We've stripped down and removed everything from the official Raspbian image to give us a bare minimal Raspbian server image that we call DietPi-Core.



DietPi - Core (Minimal image stats):

Minimal and optimized Raspbian Image for all Pi models.

DietPi-Software: Install optional "ready to run" software, quickly and easily, with optimizations unique to your Pi model.

DietPi-Config: A feature rich config tool for your Pi. Overclock and tweak your pi, scan and connect to wifi SSID's, and many many more options.

ARMhf - hardware floating point calculations.

Small 120MB compressed image.

Fits on a 1GB or greater SD card

Only 11 running processes after boot

16MB of memory usage after boot

RamLog installed. All logs goto RAM and get cleared on daily basis with cron (saves SD writes, performance increased, no need for logrotate).

Lightweight SSH server (Dropbear) is installed instead of OpenSSH.

Wifi Support. Unlike most Raspbian minimal images, ours includes full Wifi support.



DietPi-Software: DietPi-Software allows for popular, optional install choices. All of which are pre-configured and "ready to run" with all the optimizations and configurations done for you. This ensures you get the maximum performance from your Pi and the software you choose to install



DietPi-Config: DietPi-Config is a feature rich configuration tool for your Pi:

Change overclocking profiles

Change resolution, set audio output, analogue audio quality etc.

Tweak ARM temp limits, change CPU governor settings and many more.

Full networking tool that allows you to connect to Wifi SSIDs easily, change static IP's address, and many more options.

Samba client utility allows you to quickly and easily connect to Windows Shares.

NoIp client utility, allows you to quickly and easily setup your website address for your Pi.

DietPi - Download / Info

nOS

nOS is an operating system for the Raspberry Pi that aims to make the device simple, fast and easy to use. It incorporates an XFCE desktop which is lightweight and user friendly for previous users of Microsoft Windows. It uses a modified version of the NOOBS installer for the installation as it only requires a quick drag and drop to the SD card.

More information is available at http://www.nos.net.nz

Moebius

A very compact ARM HF distribution, using 20Mb of RAM (with SSH server running) for the entire operating system. It fits in a 128Mb SD card, has auto-resizing features to better adapt to your SD card size and uses its own repositories for installing everything you need. A wise configuration and a small memory footprint are ideal for an headless machine or for interacting with real word I/O devices, take a look at Moebius Website. Version 2 is current stable version.

Raspbian Server Edition

This is a stripped-down version of Raspbian with some extra packages.

Red Sleeve Linux

Red Sleeve Linux is a Linux distribution that aims to bring the RHEL clone design to the ARM architecture. There are images for several ARM devices including the Raspberry Pi.

IPFire

IPFire is an Open Source firewall distribution for x86 and ARM-based systems. It turns the Raspberry Pi computer into a small router for home networks and very small businesses. As the Raspberry Pi computer comes with only one NIC, it works perfectly as a 3G router without plugging in additional hardware.

The generally small system that provides essential services for networks can be enhanced by addons which add new features to IPFire. So the system can be turned into a file server and much more.

More information is available at http://www.ipfire.org

Raspberry Pi Thin Client

Thin Client project want to create a very cheap thin client over Raspberry Pi board! Microsoft RDC, Citrix ICA & VMWare View

BerryTerminal

BerryTerminal is a minimal Linux distribution designed to turn the Raspberry Pi mini computer into a low-cost thin client. It allows users to login to a central Edubuntu or other LTSP server, and run applications on the central server. It does not run on Raspberry Pi 2 with the ARM7 CPU.

The same project offers a useful installer tool called BerryBoot with versions for both the original Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi 2.

GeeXboX ARM

GeeXboX is a free and Open Source Media-Center purposed Linux distribution for embedded devices and desktop computers. GeeXboX is not an application, it’s a full-featured OS, that one can boot as a LiveCD, from a USB key, an SD/MMC card or install on its regular HDD. The GeeXboX distribution is lightweight and designed for one single goal: embed all major multimedia applications as to turn your computer into an HTPC.

http://www.geexbox.org/category/arm/

DarkElec

None of the currently available solutions do a perfect job with running XBMC/Kodi on the Pi, however OpenELEC comes by far the closest, in spite of its locked-down nature.

This fork aims to remedy the very few flaws in its implementation and to focus 100% on the Pi, while also sticking to upstream and incorporating its updates.

Features:

•Low idle CPU usage (< 15%) •Smoother and more responsive •Built-in XBMC addons: iPlayer, custom fixed version of Demand 5, various unofficial repos •iPlayer, 4oD, Demand 5, ITV Player, SportsDevil all fully tested+working •Improved wifi connectivity •Added test-connman scripts for easy wifi setup •Added wireless_tools (iwconfig etc.) •Added rndis_wlan wifi driver (broadcom 4320 chipset) •Easy SD card installation script for building from source

LibreELEC

LibreELEC is a conservative fork of the popular OpenELEC project with a stronger focus on pre-release testing and post-release change management.

LibreELEC also runs Kodi, an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. The base system has been designed and built from the ground up to be as efficient as possible – consuming only tiny disk and memory footprints, and providing cutting edge hardware support to deliver a set-top box experience.



Support:

It supports many of the popular HTPC hardware solutions, from Raspberry Pi to Wetek, Odroid C2 and iMX6 (both via community support), and Intel-based machines using Nvidia, to AMD with a Intel-graphics solutions.

OpenELEC

OpenELEC is an embedded operating system built specifically to run XBMC, the Open Source entertainment media hub. The idea behind OpenELEC is to allow people to use their Home Theatre PC (HTPC) like any other device you might have attached to your TV, like a DVD player or Sky box. Instead of having to manage a full operating system, configure it and install the packages required to turn it into a hybrid media center, OpenELEC is designed to be simple to install, manage and use, making it more like running a set-top box than a full-blown computer.

OSMC

Raspbmc now OSMC is a Linux distribution based on Debian that brings XBMC/Kodi to your Raspberry Pi. This device has an excellent form factor and enough power to handle media playback, making it an ideal component in a low HTPC setup, yet delivering the same XBMC/Kodi experience that can be enjoyed on much more expensive platforms. Raspbmc is brought to you by the developer of the Crystalbuntu Linux Distribution, which brings XBMC/Kodi and 1080p decoding to the 1st generation Apple TV.

XBian

XBian is a small, fast and lightweight media center distro for the Raspberry Pi, based on a minimal Raspbian image. It's slogan is "XBMC on Raspberry Pi, bleeding edge" and thus it's main focus is delivering the fastest XBMC/Kodi solution for the Raspberry Pi. Thereby making most of the commercial media-center products obsolete...

Features:

Fits on a 1GB SD card

Low RAM and CPU usage

Very smooth UI

Auto mount USB

AFP support

NFS support

AirPlay support

CEC support

Lirc support

PVR support

Kernel 3.10.9

Performance as the default governor

Out of the box support for almost all wlan adapters

User friendly configuration tool xbian-config

Source code on github

Large community

Debian-based Apt repo so keeping your system up-to-date is easy.





RasPlex

RasPlex is an Entertainment Center Solution for Raspberry Pi Simply put, RasPlex lets you turn your TV into a Smart TV. Similar to the AppleTV, but completely free and Open Source, RasPlex is basically a set-top box software. Once RasPlex is stable, it will have support for legacy console game emulation (NES, SNES, etc), as well as Plex Channels (Netflix, Crackle, Youtube, etc). RasPlex is a Plex Home Theater Client More technically stated, RasPlex is a complete port of Plex Home Theater (formerly Plex Media Center) for Raspberry Pi. RasPlex currently runs on OpenELEC for reasons of limited manpower, but there is a working Raspbian port that just needs some time to be brought up to speed. RasPlex was created on Gentoo linux, but that port has since been abandoned for performance reasons. We regularly merge in changes from Plex Home Theater and OpenELEC. Once things cool off a bit and we are more stable (or we get the manpower), we will maintain a Raspbian release as well. RasPlex is the Perfect Companion to a Plex Media Server Many people will use expensive computers as Plex Clients, or have to go through the inconvenient of plugging a computer into their TV every time they want to use Plex. With RasPlex, just plug it in and your media is always ready. Put one on every TV, and have your media everywhere! You can even put RasPlex on your friend's TV's, and watch your media remotely.

Daylight

Daylight Linux A Debian 10 Buster based linux, lightweight Fluxbox gui with many usefull softwares and features pre-installed. Daylight Linux version 4 has just been released. The linux kernel is now upgraded to the 5.3 version for the AMD64 live version and Kernel 4.19.68 for the Raspberry Pi version. All packages are upgraded to the Debian 10 version or to the cutting edge version (experimental) for all current softwares. Added compatibility for the Raspberry Pi 4.

PwnPi

PwnPi is a Linux-based penetration testing Dropbox distribution for the Raspberry Pi. It currently has 181 network security tools pre-installed to aid the penetration tester. It is built on the Debian Squeeze image from the Raspberry Pi foundation's website and uses XFCE as window manager

ha-pi

Description This Debian Squeeze image created to perform "pwn plug" type of attacks using Raspberry Pi. Please look at the wiki for further details Wiki

Kali

Kali Linux Features

Kali is a complete rebuild of BackTrack Linux, adhering completely to Debian development standards. All-new infrastructure has been put in place, all tools were reviewed and packaged, and we use Git as VCS.

More than 300 penetration testing tools: After reviewing every tool that was included in BackTrack, we eliminated a great number of tools that either did not work or had other tools available that provided similar functionality.

Free and always will be: Kali Linux, like its predecessor, is completely free and always will be. You will never, ever have to pay for Kali Linux.

Open Git source tree: We are huge proponents of Open Source software and our development tree is available for all to see and all sources are available for those who wish to tweak and rebuild packages.

FHS compliant: Kali has been developed to adhere to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, allowing all Linux users to easily locate binaries, support files, libraries, etc.

Wide wireless device support: We have built Kali Linux to support as many wireless devices as we possibly can, allowing it to run properly on a wide variety of hardware and making it compatible with numerous USB and other wireless devices.

Custom kernel patched for injection: As penetration testers, the development team often needs to do wireless assessments so our kernel has the latest injection patches included.

Secure development environment: The Kali Linux team is made up of a small group of trusted individuals who can only commit packages and interact with the repositories while using multiple secure protocols.

GPG signed packages and repos: All Kali packages are signed by each individual developer when they are built and committed and the repositories subsequently sign the packages as well.

Multi-language: Although pentesting tools tend to be written in English, we have ensured that Kali has true multilingual support, allowing more users to operate in their native language and locate the tools they need for the job.

Completely customizable: We completely understand that not everyone will agree with our design decisions so we have made it as easy as possible for our more adventurous users to customize Kali Linux to their liking, all the way down to the kernel.

ARMEL and ARMHF support: Since ARM-based systems are becoming more and more prevalent and inexpensive, we knew that Kali’s ARM support would need to be as robust as we could manage, resulting in working installations for both ARMEL and ARMHF systems. Kali Linux has ARM repositories integrated with the mainline distribution so tools for ARM will be updated in conjunction with the rest of the distribution. Kali is currently available for the following ARM devices:

rk3306 mk/ss808 Raspberry Pi ODROID U2/X2 Samsung Chromebook

Kali is specifically tailored to penetration testing and therefore, all documentation on this site assumes prior knowledge of the Linux operating system. Install Download If all you want to do is to install Kali on your Raspberry Pi, follow these instructions:

1.Get a nice fast 8 GB (or more) SD card. Class 10 cards are highly recommended.

2.Download the Kali Linux Raspberry Pi image from our downloads area.

3.Use the dd utility to image this file to your SD card.

On Windows you can use win32 disk imagier Guide how to usewin32 disk imagier

Alert! This process will wipe out your SD card. If you choose the wrong storage device, you will wipe out your computer's hard disk.

This process can take a while depending on your USB storage device speed and image size. Once the dd operation is complete, boot up your Rasberry Pi with the SD card plugged in. You will be able to log in to Kali (root / toor) and startx. That’s it, you’re done!

I2Pberry

The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is a computer network layer that allows applications to send messages to each other pseudonymously and securely. Uses include anonymous web surfing, chatting, blogging and file transfers. The software that implements this layer is called an I2P router and a computer running I2P is called an I2P node. The software is Free and Open Source and is published under multiple licenses.

I2Pberry was created to turn a Raspberry Pi into a I2P node through which you can access all the services offered through I2P. Detailed installation instructions and alternate download methods are included on our main site.

Bodhi

Bodhi Linux is a small Linux distribution using the Enlightenment window manager and the ARM build is based on Debian.

If you hit any snags or find bugs with this image please let us know in the R_Pi section of our user forums so we can improve this release.

ARMHF announced for Bodhi Linux on R_Pi

Release Announcement from Bodhi Developer Blog

Download from SourceForge.net

what-about-the-raspberry-pi Forum thread

Alpha Release | Link Alpha Bodhi R_Pi) User/Password: bodhi/bodhi root/raspberry Beta Release | Link Beta Bodhi R_Pi User/Password: pi/bodhilinux Root: sudo su root/bodhilinux

Bodhi Linux moves ARM branch to ARMHF Download newest Release from SourceForge.net The R_Pi Bodhi build is built directly on top of Raspbian and incorporates all of their changes and improvements.

Gentoo

Gentoo Linux is a source based rolling-release meta-distribution which emphasizes choice and flexibility. Gentoo ARM aims to be the most up to date and fastest ARM distribution available.

A Quick Start Guide exists how to install Gentoo on the Raspberry Pi.

Gentoo Section on the official Raspberry Pi forum.

Adafruit - Occidentalis v0.1

http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-raspberry-pi-educational-linux-distro/occidentalis-v0-dot-1 Occidentalis v0.1. Rubus occidentalis is the black raspberry. It is derived from Raspbian Wheezy July 15 Made a few key changes to make it more hardware-hacker friendly!

I2C and hardware SPI support

I2C/SPI modules initialized on boot

... Please keep in mind, adafruit is not full time linux distro maintainers - we will try to fix any bugs we find but this distro is not for beginners or people who are new to linux!

Tiny Core Linux

What is Tiny Core?

First, if you don't know what Linux and distributions are, you should read some interesting and conflicting definitions of Linux. Then, read about distributions. In short, the Tiny Core distribution is like a customized version of the Linux kernel and other tools

Download

RISC OS

RISC OS is a fast and lightweight computer operating system designed in Cambridge, England by Acorn. First released in 1987, its origins can be traced back to the original team that developed the ARM microprocessor. RISC OS includes BBC BASIC which was primarily conceived to teach programming skills as part of the BBC computer literacy project.

Commodore Pi

What It Is... The goal of this project is to develop a native Commodore 64 emulator and operating system for the Raspberry Pi, with the following features: •Fast boot up time - nearly instant on •Output to HDMI and composite video sources •GPIO pin connection to external devices (hooks via the kernal code) •Ethernet connection •USB Connections •Access to the full RAM of the Pi possibly via bank switching •Multitasking by means of multiple emulation cores •Modern graphics modes Think of the project as a Commodore 64 operating system. It is based on the Comeback64 emulator. The goal will be to include all of the expected emulation features such as SID sound, sprites, joystick connectivity, REU access, etc. In time, even the emulation speed could be changed, as well as additional modern graphics modes. Links

Just copy to your Raspbian card. It has only been tested on composite output

PiParted

A lot of issues come from people not knowing how to do it right, e.g. just dropping the img file onto an SD card. So I’ve customised a GParted LiveCD ISO and written up a custom script to *hopefully* install a distro straight onto an SD card. This is a very early iteration of this idea, but hopefully will develop into something useful.

At the moment, essentially what it will do is

1. Grab the list of Distros from the RPI Download page

2. Let the user select which distro he wants to install

3. Select the Disk device that he wants to install it onto

4. dd the image onto the disk device.

5. Flash OS from zip file on SD Card:

6. Reset SD Card: This will format an SD Card back to defaults, i.e. one vfat partition.

Download

Main site

PiBang Linux

PiBang linux is a Raspbian-based distribution. PiBang is inspired by Crunchbang Linux, an i686 and x86_68 Debian-based distribution. It comes preconfigured with many helpful scripts and pipemenus as well as a fork of Raspi-config with increases functions such as support for changing the user and hostname. PiBang is also one of the heavier Rasperry Pi distributions boasting a complete package set with favorites such as Abiword, OMXPlayer, GIMP, and VLC all pre-installed.

http://www.pibanglinux.org

Plan 9

Plan 9 is a distributed operating system originally designed and implemented by Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, and Phil Winterbottom @ Bell Labs. It is a lean operating system that has been ported to super computers such as IBM's Blue Gene down to tiny boards such the Raspberry Pi.

NetBSD

NetBSD is an operating system based off 4.3BSD and is geared towards embedded systems. There has been an unofficial public release Download here comments about the release here

FreeBSD

Details of the FreeBSD port Download here Official snapshots

SlaXBMCRPi

SlaXBMCRPi is a minimal Linux distribution based on Slackware ARM that brings a full-featured XBMC/KODI solution to your Raspberry Pi. It allows the user to exit from XBMC/KODI to the Desktop should he need to perform typical desktop tasks (browsing, text editing etc.).

The latest release, SlaXBMC 14.2, supports Raspberry Pi 1 (A, A+, B, B+) and Raspberry Pi 2/3 hardware. There are two pre-built images per hardware profile available:

Developer: Requires 3.5GB disk space (linux filesystem) and contains all development packages required to compile the Linux kernel, XBMC and other XBMC-related (or not) packages

Minimal: Requires 2.2GB disk space (linux filesystem) and contains only the packages required to run XBMC.



Raspberry Pi 1 (A, A+, B, B+) pre-built images

Raspberry Pi 2/3 pre-built images

Source, packages and Installation instructions

PiMAME

Raspberry Pi distribution geared towards emulating video games. Maintained by Shea Silverman

PiBox

PiBox provides a build system based on Crosstool-NG, Buildroot/Busybox, the Linux kernel, Rasperry Pi firmware and installation tools to create a base system that can be installed to an SD card to boot a Raspberry Pi. The base system serves as a foundation on which opkg based systems can be installed.

PiBox Development Platform is the official name of the core build system. It provides the platform on which the following systems are based.

PiBox Media System is a consumer device based on PiBox with a goal of providing media playback including webcam video and video streaming. This is accomplished by adding custom opkg installs on the base PiBox Development Platform. The PiBox Media System can be used as a node on a network or as a wireless access point to serve movies to other PiBox Media Systems.

PiBox Kiosk is a photo frame solution supporting static images and videos that is cable of working on standard displays and the Raspberry Pi 7" touchscreen.

PiBox Auto-Kiosk is an automated video player useful with projectors that can run unattended.

Additional systems, such as home automation, the Xeon phone, and Docker-based systems are in development and expected with the next major release.

PiBox is currently a one man project. I'd like to have more users of the system and welcome new developers. To get started using the system please download the SD card images or the tarball, unpack it and use the mksd card to format your SD card. Then use the mkinstall script to install the distribution to the SD card. Full installation instructions are availabe from the download archive. To get started with development, please read the developer wiki on how to build the PiBox Development Platform.

Contact me at mjhammel@graphics-muse.org if you're interested in helping out, have ideas for improvement or just want to know how to use the system.

Created and maintained by Michael J. Hammel

OpenWrt

OpenWrt is described as a Linux distribution for embedded devices.

15.05.1 Chaos Calmer: Raspberry Pi 1: http://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05.1/brcm2708/bcm2708/ Raspberry Pi 2: http://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05.1/brcm2708/bcm2709/

The Raspberry Pi is now supported by the Barrier Braker release (14.07-rc1) available here:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/barrier_breaker/14.07-rc1/brcm2708/generic/

The Raspberry Pi is also supported by the older Attitude Adjustment release (12.09-beta) available here:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/attitude_adjustment/12.09-beta/brcm2708/generic/

The daily trunk is now finally available here:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/brcm2708/

You should mirror those files if you want to use them because they are built daily.

OpenWrt Wiki for Raspberry Pi http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi

Related links:

Nard

Nard is a software development kit (SDK) written from scratch for the Raspberry Pi family of boards. Unlike Raspbian, which primarily is for desktop use, Nard focuses on embedded systems running 24x7 for years. It has many features requested by industrial users.

http://www.nard.se

Volumio

Volumio is described as an Audiophile Music Player solution for Raspberry PI and embedded single board computers. Evolution of RaspyFi project it is based on a custom minimal Debian system fine tuned for Bit Perfect Audio Playback. It is designed to be operated in headless mode, controlling and configuring it via its WebUI or from third party clients.

Features:

•Ready to play: flash it and you're ready •Audiophile Quality: fine tuned ALSA for bit perfect and low latency playback •Control it via integrated Webui with PC, Smartphone, Tablet •FLAC, WAV, MP3, AAC, ALAC, PLS, Muse, DSD, OGG playback •Easy configuration of Wi-Fi networking and NAS Mounts •Airplay, UPNP, DLNA and WebRadios playback capability •Audio out via HDMI, USB, Analog Jack, S/PDIF, I2S (depends on platform) •All Raspberry PI i2s DACs supported •Multiroom Playback via Android App

Related links:

Kano OS

Kano is a fast and fun OS for the Raspberry Pi, pre-installed with modified Minecraft Pi and Chromium.

Related links:

MINIBIAN

MINIBIAN is a minimal Raspbian-based Linux image for Raspberry Pi. The main focus is to have a small, updated and stable distribution that is fully compatible with official Raspbian “Wheezy” image, without GUI and unneeded tools. So this image is perfect for embedded projects, or wherever you need to use all RPi resources for your specific tasks. The main advantage is that MINIBIAN has a very small footprint, boots in some seconds and uses just few of precious RPi RAM. Unlike other similar projects, MINIBIAN has not been obtained purging unneeded packages from original image, neither recompiling the source code: it’s just a customized Raspbian installation obtained from the same repository used for official RPi Wheezy image. So kernel and binary files are exactly the same you will find on standard image, with the difference that MINIBIAN fit on 512Mb SD Card, is fastest, and more frequently updated.

Related links:

slrpi

Slrpi (slackware/raspberry pi) is a minimal installation of Slackware ARM on a Raspberry Pi. It is built with the mini root filesystem and the Raspbian image.

Related links:

motionEyeOS

motionEyeOS is a video surveillance distro for the Raspberry PI based on BuildRoot and Motion.

Related links:

Slackware ARM

Slackware ARM's primary goal is to provide (as near as possible) a full port of Slackware x86. Some packages have not been built since they are x86 only, whilst some have been added to support ARM platforms. Slackware is the longest surviving-- currently maintained-- Linux distribution available and is still the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there. Slackware complies with the published Linux standards, such as the Linux File System Standard and has always considered simplicity and stability paramount. As a result, Slackware has become one of the most popular, stable, and friendly distributions available. There's a vast number of people running Slackware ARM on their RPis. Since before the release of Slackware ARM 14.0, there have been a number of community efforts to bring Slackware to the Raspberry Pi. From preinstalled images to full installation guides, Slackware ARM has a thriving community of Raspberry Pi users, and is very well supported in that respect. Slackware has always been well known for its reliability, power, and versatility, and that's exactly what you will find when running it on the Raspberry Pi. Slackware ARM hard float port is now available for the Raspberry Pi 2, 3, and 4.

Slackware ARM is not supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Slackware on the Raspberry Pi is only supported by the Slackware community, outside of the official Slackware ARM tree.

Related links:

RuneAudio

RuneAudio is a streaming audio player for the Raspberry Pi, optimized for high quality music playback using USB and I2S DACs, and digital audio (S/PDIF) output boards. It comes as a complete operating system and player package distributed as a downloadable SD card image.

A key part of RuneAudio is a platform-independent web user interface. The web UI is compatible with smart phones, PC's, tablets and most Android devices with a modern browser. It gives users control over their music library and networked music sources, playback, and system configuration, with no need for previous experience with Linux or use of the command line.

All popular audio formats are supported through MPD (Music Player Daemon). Supported network protocols include NFS, Samba, Bonjour and UpNP/DLNA. RuneAudio devices integrate seamlessly with other UpNP/DLNA media players and servers on the same network.

RuneAudio is an open-source collaborative project based on Arch Linux.

resinOS

resinOS is an open-source operating system designed to run Docker containers on embedded devices.

Related links:

Raspberry ownCloud

A plug-and-play solution for one's personal data cloud, a Raspberry Pi-powered ownCloud 9.1.1 installation. Useful for owning one's cloud storage or automatically backing up Dropbox or Google Drive data to an external USB hard drive.

Raspberry ownCloud is also able to stream the sync-folder-contained media files to UPnP/DLNA players.

Related links:

Available ARMv7 distributions

Ubuntu

Ubuntu was initially planned to be the default distribution, but the current version of Ubuntu only supports ARMv7 onwards, not the ARMv6 architecture used by the Raspberry Pi's processor (until Pi 2). Therefore Ubuntu does not work on Raspberry Pi 1, and there is no further information about this changing in the near future.

A bug report on this subject was submitted to Ubuntu's bug tracker. The responses to that bug include an unofficial viewpoint from a Canonical employee, outlining the amount of work required to support ARMv6 (and therefore, potentially, Raspberry Pi 1). See Bug 848154

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM

Slackware ARM

Slackware ARM -current (hard float port) is available for the Raspberry Pi 2 & 3. The minimum required architecture for the Slackware ARM hard float port is ARMv7-a. So, the hard float port cannot be installed on a Raspberry Pi (1).

Windows 10 IoT Core Edition

Windows 10 Internet of Things Core Edition is available as preview version at the moment, with the release of it it will be available to the maker and IoT community for free.

Related links:

Announced distributions

The following distributions have been announced and may have been publicly demonstrated but distributions are not generally available quite yet.

Firefox OS

Meego MER & XBMC

The MeeGo MER project provides a Linux-based, Open Source software platform for the next generation of computing devices. The MeeGo MER software platform is designed to give developers the broadest range of device segments to target for their applications, including netbooks, handheld computing and communications devices, in-vehicle infotainment devices, smart TVs, tablets and more – all using a uniform set of APIs based on Qt. XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. Meego TV 1.2 uses XBMC as a reference GUI (that is, a starting point for creating a custom GUI).

Puppy

Puppy Linux is designed to be a tiny Linux distribution (<100MB). One distro version of Puppy for ARM is SAP6 Debian6 armel binaries and another PuppiPlan all under the Puppy initiative. Puppy Linux is going back to his roots. Designed to run from 256MB of RAM. Making every bit count. Join the Puppy geek adventure for 2012. Woof Woof

RPi-Buildroot

RPi-Buildroot is a set of Makefiles and patches that make it easy to generate a complete customized embedded Linux system for your Raspberry Pi. This distro is based on Buildroot so it's perfect for somebody looking to build a trimmed-down or task-specific system.

Please note that this distro is intended for advanced users.

Aros Hosted on Linux

Aros is an Open Source Amiga like operating system (OS) at the API level. This version runs as a task under Linux to take advantage of the drivers available inside the GNU Linux OS core.

Android

Discuss: Forum at raspberrypi.org

Wiki & Main site





ANDROID TRANSPORTER

The Android Transporter allows you to share display content wirelessly with remote screens in real time. Please be aware that the Transporter is still a technology study and it is missing the maturity of a full-featured product. However, we think that the Android Transporter is already exciting enough to let you play around with it. We believe that with the recently released Miracast standard you will get a very similar technology in upcoming Android devices, and we are considering making the Transporter compliant with the Miracast specs.

QUICK START GUIDE Let’s start with the Asus Nexus 7. By installing the Android Transporter firmware on your Asus Nexus 7 all data on the device will be removed including the contents of the /sdcard directory! So maybe you want to backup some data before you begin. To start, enable USB debugging on your Nexus 7 by switching on this option under Settings -> Developer options. Next, unlock the bootloader of your Nexus 7 device. This will void your device warranty and it will also do a factory reset! Install the adb and fastboot utilities. On Microsoft Windows you will also need Google’s USB drivers. Just search the Internet for instructions how to install this tools. Unlocking the bootloader is done by getting the device into the bootloader using the adb reboot bootloader command. Now unlock it with the fastboot oem unlock command. Download the Android Transporter firmware for the Asus Nexus 7 and unpack it. Reboot your Nexus 7 device into the bootloader using adb reboot bootloader. In the Android-Transporter directory you will find the flash script, which is called flash-all.sh. Be aware that the fastboot utility has to be available in the PATH environment for the flash script. Execute the flash script. Your Asus Nexus 7 is now ready. To switch back to the original Nexus 7 firmware image you should first download it fromGoogle’s factory images site. Then you can flash the original firmware image using the same instructions that you used to flash the Android Transporter firmware image.

Let’s move on to the Raspberry Pi. Download the Android Transporter firmware for the Raspberry Pi and unpack it. Insert an SD card into your card reader and flash the firmware image using the dd utility: sudo dd bs=1M if=esrlabs-rpi-android-transporter-2012-10-02.img of=/dev/sdX. Substitute /dev/sdX with the real SD card device name. For more information on flashing the Raspberry Pi see the Embedded Linux Wiki page for the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is now also ready.

Next, you have to set up the networking between the two devices. You can either connect both devices to your home router or you can make use of the Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi hotspot. Both scenarios require the Raspberry Pi to be plugged into your home router. The Wi-Fi hotspot works with USB Wi-Fi adapters that are supported by the Realtek rtl8192cu Linux driver. We tested the Wi-Fi hotspot with the Netgear N150 Microadapter and with the Asus N13 Wi-Fi Stick. It works well with both Wi-Fi sticks except that we occasionally had some power consumption issues with the Asus device. If you want to make use of the Wi-Fi hotspot plug in the stick before the Raspberry Pi starts up. The network name of the Wi-Fi hotspot is RaspberryPiAP and the default password is E.S.R.Labs. The Wi-Fi hotspot may have the advantage that the Android Transporter has its own dedicated network to minimize the latency jitter during screen mirroring. If you connect both devices to your home router please make sure that the Wi-Fi transmitting power of your router is set to high. Otherwise you may experience high packet loss, which is bad for the Android Transporter.

When you now connect your Nexus 7 to the Wi-Fi network and start the Android Transporter you should see the Raspberry Pi in the list of available media hubs. The Raspberry Pi has announced itself as media sink via service discovery. Just tap on the Raspberry Pi item to start the screen mirroring. If you want to stop the screen mirroring just pull down the notification bar and click the Android Transporter “Switch off” item.

By default the Android Transporter will make use of the H.264 over RTP over UDP streaming protocols according to RFC3984. If you are in a building with a lot of Wi-Fi networks, it may be possible that the Android Transporter does not work really well because of high packet loss. If that is the case you should switch to the H.264 over RTP over TCP streaming protocols according to RFC3984 and RFC4571. You can do this in the preferences of the Android Transporter app. The latency will typically be around 20-30ms higher when using the reliable TCP transport protocol.

Enjoy the Android Transporter tech demo .

The Android Transporter is a custom ROM and not an app since we had to make adjustemts to various parts of the Android platform to make it happen.