Latest Raspberry Pi OS Release Brings Improved Camera and Networking Support

admin September 7, 2022

1 1 minute read

The Raspberry Pi system can soak up the shine of its new operating system today with the launch of the latest version of the Debian-based OS for small computers. This release contains a lot of tweaks, but the main features seem to be an improved Python camera interface and a simplified ability to easily turn your Raspberry Pi into a wireless access point.

Behind the scenes, this means that Pi OS has moved from using the easy-to-edit but slightly unobtrusive dhcphd file to manage networking to the NetworkManager application already used by other Linux distributions. I mean This is still not the default. dhcphd is still there, but it will become the default in future releases, so you’ll have to get used to it.

NetworkManager makes it easy to connect to Wi-Fi networks using hidden SSIDs and smooths the process of dealing with VPNs. Some may also find the ability granted by the app to configure the Pi as a wireless access point interesting. This is currently considered a beta feature and should be switched to using the raspi-config tool there is.

Elsewhere, the new Picamera2 Python library carries on the original PiCamera (a community-developed project that grew out of a personal project), where “Pythonic” means connecting a camera to a Pi. Although it is said to be easy to use, it is not like the old software. The libcamera library, which provides a command line interface through the terminal, is also available for users who are not ready for PiCamera2 yet.

Keyboard shortcuts aren’t particularly exciting, but they can speed up your computer use. You can now access the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi menus without using your mouse. There are also new audio input controls. Right-clicking the new microphone icon in the taskbar gives you level control and even allows you to switch between input devices.

For new OS releases, blog post You can get it the usual way on the Raspberry Pi site, either by downloading it from the appropriate page or by using the Raspberry Pi Imager tool.