Now, after months of beta testing, the folks at Raspberry Pi have released the first official build of Raspberry Pi OS that’s available in either 32-bit or 64-bit versions.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has made a 64-bit version of its operating system available. It won't run on all Raspberry Pi hardware but it should on some of the more modern hardware.

Boards dating back to 2016 (Raspberry Pi 3) have been capable of running a 64-bit OS, but now the official Raspberry Pi OS is available in 64-bit form if you head on over to the download page.

Another important advantage of running a 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS over 32-bit is the fact that you can run both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the third-party software natively.

The Raspberry Pi hardware has included a 64-bit processor since the Pi 3 launched in early 2016, but the Raspberry Pi OS (formerly known as Raspbian) has remained primarily 32-bit.

Even though it has been possible to run a 64-bit operating system on the latest Raspberry Pi mini PCs, the Foundation has finally made the official Raspberry Pi 64-bit OS available to the masses.

Long-term Raspberry Pi watchers will have seen a lot of OS upgrades in their time, from the first Debian Squeeze previews through the Raspbian years to the current Raspberry Pi OS. Their latest OS … ...

It's also launching alongside a beta version of a new 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS, another first for Raspberry Pi, which has been limited to 32-bit since 2011.

So he installed a light version of 64-bit Debian and ran some benchmarks for the Raspberry Pi 4 running both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.