Raspbian 2016-11-25 Has Released, SSH will be disabled by default Distribution

Simon Long has announced the release of Raspbian 2016-11-25, a security update of the Debian-based distribution for the Raspberry Pi single-board computers

Raspbian is a free operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux and optimised for the Raspberry Pi hardware (the armhf processor architecture). Raspbian comes with over 35,000 packages, or pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation on a Raspberry Pi. The initial build was completed in June of 2012, but the distribution continues to be active developed with an emphasis on improving the stability and performance of as many Debian packages as possible. Although Debian produces a distribution for the arm architecture, it is compatible only with versions later than the one used on the Raspberry Pi (ARMv7-A CPUs and higher vs the Raspberry Pi's ARMv6 CPU).

Distributed as a Raspbian image

The Raspbian operating system is distributed as a Raspbian image, a binary file that users can download from Softpedia as deploy it onto a SD card, which can be booted on the Raspberry Pi computer. In addition, users can purchase high-quality, branded SDHC cards that contains the latest official stable release of the Raspbian operating system preinstalled on Pi Hut's Raspberry Pi Store. The distribution is compatible with ARMv6 CPUs and higher

Uses the LXDE desktop environment

Raspbian uses LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) for its default graphical session, which looks traditional and comprises of a single taskbar located on the bottom edge of the screen. The taskbar includes several applets that allow you to cycle between virtual workspaces, interact with running programs, access essential system functions, as well as to launch your favorite applications.

What has changed?

First, from now on SSH will be disabled by default on our images. SSH (Secure SHell) is a networking protocol which allows you to remotely log into a Linux computer and control it from a remote command line. As mentioned above, many Pi owners use it to install a Pi headless (without screen or keyboard) and control it from another PC.

In the past, SSH was enabled by default, so people using their Pi headless could easily update their SD card to a new image. Switching SSH on or off has always required the use of raspi-config or the Raspberry Pi Configuration application, but to access those, you need a screen and keyboard connected to the Pi itself, which is not the case in headless applications. So we’ve provided a simple mechanism for enabling SSH before an image is booted.

The boot partition on a Pi should be accessible from any machine with an SD card reader, on Windows, Mac, or Linux. If you want to enable SSH, all you need to do is to put a file called ssh in the /boot/ directory. The contents of the file don’t matter: it can contain any text you like, or even nothing at all. When the Pi boots, it looks for this file; if it finds it, it enables SSH and then deletes the file. SSH can still be turned on or off from the Raspberry Pi Configuration application or  raspi-config; this is simply an additional way to turn it on if you can’t easily run either of those applications.

Here is the full release announcement with an explanation of the changes made in this release.

How do I get the updates?

The latest Raspbian with PIXEL image is available from the Downloads page on our website now. Note that the uncompressed image is over 4GB in size, and some older unzippers will fail to decompress it properly. If you have problems, use 7-Zip on Windows and The Unarchiver on Mac; both are free applications which have been tested and will decompress the file correctly.

To update your existing Jessie image with all the bug fixes and these new security changes, type the following at the command line:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y pprompt

and then reboot.

Download: 2016-11-25-raspbian-jessie.zip (1,469MB, SHA1, torrent, pkglist).