Raspberry Pi OS update adds Bluetooth improvements, experimental Wayland support, and more

The Raspberry Pi lineup of microcomputers has officially been around for a decade now, and it’s still a popular option for everything from teaching programming to powering DIY projects. The group behind the Raspberry Pi has been working on improvements for the default operating system, and a few changes are now available to try out.

The most important change is that the Raspberry Pi OS will no longer use “pi” as the default username and home folder — instead, you’ll have to set a unique username and password during the initial setup process. Raspberry Pi said in a blog post that the default username “could potentially make a brute-force attack slightly easier, and in response to this, some countries are now introducing legislation to forbid any Internet-connected device from having default login credentials.”

Raspberry Pi setup

The updated setup wizard (Source: Raspberry Pi)

You still have the option of setting the username as “pi,” which might be required for some Pi applications and scripts that wasn’t built for different usernames, but it’s not recommended. If you use the Raspberry Pi OS Lite image without the setup wizard, you’ll see a simpler prompt for setting a username, and configuring a custom username and password is possible with headless setups (where the Pi isn’t intended to be used with a TV or monitor) using the Raspberry Pi Imager.

The setup wizard has also been updated to support pairing a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Many newer Pi boards support Bluetooth (or work with USB Bluetooth adapters), but until now, you still needed a wired keyboard for the initial setup process.

Finally, Raspberry Pi OS now has initial support for Wayland desktop sessions. Wayland is a display technology that is slowly replacing the 37-year-old X Window System in the Linux ecosystem, and even though most Linux distributions still use X by default, Pi OS is introducing it as an experimental option to collect feedback. Screenshots, the screen magnifier, remote desktop tools, and other features aren’t working yet.

You can read about enabling Wayland and changing an existing Raspberry Pi OS username at the source link below. These changes are available in the latest Raspberry Pi OS images.