Raspberry Pi Desktop targets aging x86-64 PCs with Debian 13

The Raspberry Pi Desktop is a Debian 13-based operating system designed to run on old PCs. The download size is 2.6 GB, and the system requires about 8 GB of disk space when installed. The splash screen on x86-64 PCs is labeled 'PiOS 6.3'. The PC version uses Debian's default kernel version 6.12. The installer asks few technical questions and can automatically configure most settings.

The operating system is now available only in x86-64 architecture, following Debian 13's retirement of its x86-32 edition. At idle, the system runs in a little under 450 MB of memory. In testing, the Raspberry Pi Desktop took about half as much memory as Lubuntu 26.04. The team has had 14 years of practice in diet Debian.

The system is suitable for old PCs from the Windows Vista era but may be too heavy for a 25-year-old PC intended for Windows XP. It was successfully tested on a 2008 ThinkPad X200s with an original 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The system handled Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, USB 2, volume control buttons, brightness keys, and an external screen on that device. It also ran on a 2007 ThinkPad X61 Tablet with 2 GB of RAM, except the touchscreen did not work. The system booted in under half a minute on a 19-year-old PC with an SSD.

The Raspberry Pi Desktop supports Intel Mac hardware and is ideal for old-but-working Macs no longer supported by macOS. A 4 GB MacBook Air may still have useful life running current browsers and LibreOffice on the system.