Raspberry Pi Desktop moves to Debian 13 and revives old PCs

The Register tested the x86-64 edition of Raspberry Pi Desktop based on Debian 13 on laptops from 2007–2008. The OS uses about 8 GB of disk space and under 450 MB of RAM at idle, and it ran on a ThinkPad X61 with 2 GB of memory.

• The download is 2.6 GB and an installed system takes about 8 GB
• Idle memory use is just under 450 MB, about 50 MB less with X.org
• A 2007 ThinkPad X61 with 2 GB of DDR2 booted in under 30 seconds
• The PC edition is x86-64 only after Debian 13 dropped 32-bit x86