Thoughts return to forbidden RAM upgrades as Raspberry Pi OS gets fresh lick of paint

Raspberry Pi OS has gained a new desktop layout, while surging memory prices have revived a row over firmware that restricts RAM upgrades.

Although Raspberry Pi doesn't emphasize version numbers in its materials, the updated operating system's splash screen identifies it as version 6.3, dated September 2026.

Its long-running release notes document details the changes.

This time around, the desktop GUI gets a visible revamp.

In place of the vintage-Windows-style taskbar, users can now choose a dock centered at the bottom of the screen and a full-screen app launcher.

There are three options: just a dock, just a taskbar, or both at once – in which case the panel goes transparent and disappears from view except for the status indicators at the right end.

We tried all three configurations, but missed the option to position the dock vertically.

We strongly prefer that arrangement.

If you too wish to conserve your vertical pixels, then use the raspi-config command to switch to X11 instead of Wayland.

You lose the Raspberry Pi Connect feature, but in return you get a vertical LXDE taskbar.

It looks pretty good.

We suspect the design is intended to be less intimidating to children more familiar with smartphones than desktop Windows – still an important audience for the Pi.

Under the hood, the Pi OS Wayland desktop components have been updated – the release notes say "labwc and wlroots updated to version 0.20." That is slightly behind version 0.20.2 of the labwc compositor, and The Reg FOSS desk still feels some concern when confronted with pre-1.0 version numbers.

We thought Wayland was meant to be mature and ready for enterprise production by now.