A month after Debian 13.1’s release, some of the more visible downstream forks, including Raspberry Pi OS, have decided it’s time to incorporate the latest version of the main OS into their builds.

Debian 13.0 “Trixie” appeared a couple of months ago, but as any seasoned IT industry veteran knows, it’s always a good idea to wait for at least version point one. Debian 13.1 followed in early September, and now, some of the higher-profile distros downstream from Debian itself are starting to move across. One of the very first out of the gate was Crunchbangplusplus 13 back in August, but now some of the others are catching up.

Raspberry Pi OS

For some years now, the Raspberry Pi range of single-board computers has been the best-selling family of computers of all time. By its tenth birthday it had shifted some 46 million units, comfortably outdoing the estimated 12 to 30 million sales of the classic Commodore 64. From lurking in various Pi forums, the Reg FOSS desk has the strong impression that the majority of users run the stock Pi OS, and, at the start of this month, the latest Pi OS moved to the base of Debian 13.

The new version has a refreshed theme, wallpapers, icons, and so on. A new unified Raspberry Pi Control Center application integrates and replaces several separate settings programs. The Raspberry Pi Bookshelf application has been updated. It now flags paid content, and makes it easier to access it by letting subscribers log in. Under the hood, it adopts Debian 13’s 64-bit time value, but it’s also been refactored into several separate metapackages, to make it easier to build custom installations – and also to remove elements. There’s a Wayland package, an X.org package, a themes package, a package with the additional Pi-specific apps, and so on.

The official guidance is not to try to do an in-place upgrade of your Raspberry Pi’s OS. It’s possible, but the recommended route is to write a fresh copy to a fresh microSD card, reinstall any additional apps, and bring across your config files. When we wrote about the Pi-Hole network ad filter earlier this year, we got multiple comments about upgrades going wrong. It’s a free OS that lives on a $5 storage card in a $35 computer. Just buy a new card, write a fresh OS image onto it, and then you can revert by just swapping the old card back in.

Since some of the older Pis such as the Raspberry Pi Zero are still 32-bit, there are 32-bit Pi OS downloads available, which is unusual for a Debian 13-based distro.

Peppermint OS 13

Peppermint OS is a lightweight variant of Debian, and appropriately enough on October 13, the project released its Debian 13-based Trixie edition.

We last looked at Peppermint OS a few years ago now, and while it lacks a little polish, it works and we’re happy to see that the project is still active. As we noted in 2022, there’s also a cosmetically identical systemd-free version based on Devuan Linux, but since the Debian 13-based Devuan isn’t out yet, neither is its Peppermint flavor. It should follow in time, after Devuan Excalibur does.

For now, like most other Debian-based projects, there’s no 32-bit version of Peppermint OS, but the announcement says that the team is evaluating its options in that direction. Pi OS shows it’s possible, and such a move could win the distro new users.

Linux Mint Debian Edition 7

Earlier this week, LMDE 7 “Gigi” launched, complete with minimalist release notes. LMDE 7 doesn’t have the range of different editions of the standard Ubuntu-based Linux Mint: there are no MATE or Xfce variants here, just Mint’s in-house flagship Cinnamon desktop.

Unlike with Raspberry Pi OS, upgrades from the previous version are not just supported, they’re even documented. This doesn’t apply if you’re running the x86-32 form of LMDE 6, though. There’s no 32-bit LMDE 7. Like its parent OS, LMDE is now 64-bit only. Debian 12 “Bookworm” will still get updates until June 2026, after which it will go into Debian LTS, so don’t panic just yet – but to get from 32-bit to 64-bit will mean a reinstall.

Despite its many happy users, Debian remains a little more work than Ubuntu. LMDE still represents a very easy way to install Debian, but the disappearance of a 32-bit version does remove one of its raisons d’être: LMDE was the last 32-bit OS in the Mint family. ®