Raspberry PI Foundation has released a new version of Raspbian: ‘Stretch’. In line with Debian releases, the new Raspbian Stretch is named after Disney characters – say ‘hi’ to a cute, purple octopus!
Raspbian Stretch
The main changes seem to be all ‘under the hood’ improvements, therefore, don’t expect groundbreaking visual changes to your system. There are a few highlights I would like to bring to your attention.
Bluetooth on Raspbian Stretch
The Pulse Audio has been dumped in favor of the bluez-alsa to create a better Bluetooth audio support. Should you need the Pulse Audio after the upgrade for whatever reasons – you will need to download it yourself. I’m keen to check how this improve Bluetooth connectivity with a Bluetooth enabled speaker that I have tried earlier with very miserable effects.
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
The Raspbian Stretch is classed as a major update, so you should consider a clean installation. The distro upgrade should work, however, Raspberry Pi Foundation says they can’t be guaranteed it to work for all of us. It’s possible to lose some data due to this.
To upgrade from Jessie:
modify the Files /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list. In both files, change every occurrence of the word ‘jessie’ to ‘stretch’. (Both files will require sudo to edit.)
Once done simply run:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
You can download the Raspbian Stretch directly from Raspberry Pi website. Feel free to follow me on social media as it helps me grow, share it, and comment if you need any advice. You can also support me, and fund my projects directly.
