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I am working with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2 since several years. I have installed several versions of Raspbian OS (from Noobs). This OS seems to be the "official" Linux Raspberry distribution.

There is something i do not understand:

  • My OS is working on 32 bits mode
  • I have read this raspberry has a 64 bits CPU.

So i understand, everyone which buys a raspberry and install the "official" raspbian works with 64 bits hardware and 32 bits software.

This is no optimal ? We waste the advantage of 64 bits... Why raspbian is not 64 bits whereas hardware supports 64 bits ?

Thanks

Bob5421
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1 Answers1

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The Raspberry Pi started as a 32 bit computer. The Raspberry Pi foundation cares a lot about backwards compatibility. Maintaining or even creating both a 64-bit and 32-bit OS was seen as expensive with little benefit (the Raspberry Pi had less than 4 GB RAM for the longest time).

The times have changed : An official 64-bit version of the OS is currently being beta tested.

flakeshake
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    There is a more recent version of the beta here: https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_arm64/images/raspios_arm64-2020-08-24/ – Mats Karlsson Oct 10 '20 at 13:01