Download Raspbian Buster with deskstop. These instructions are for a Raspbian Buster image that I. The release, known as iRaspbian, mimics the look and feel of the Apple Mac OS X operating system. The iRaspbian image is available for the Raspberry Pi, working great on the Raspberry Pi 4.
In this article, I will cover three Operating System (OS) for the Raspberry Pi (RPi), preferably the RPi 4. These Operating Systems are not truly MacOS or Windows 10, but a desktop with the look and feel of a Mac or Windows system. The look of a Mac or Windows is truly ‘screen deep’.
All of the Operating Systems covered in this article are based on the Raspbian Buster OS. Do note that this OS is 32-bit, but these options are extremely elegant.
Anyone that has a Raspberry Pi system has most likely installed and used Raspbian. The OS is the ‘default’ OS that comes with the Raspberry Pi if an SD card came with the board. It is the first download on the RaspberryPi.org website’s Download page (
here). It is now called 'Raspberry Pi OS' instead of Raspbian.
The three Operating Systems are as follows:
- iRaspbian - MacOS Desktop
- Raspbian X Night Hawk - Windows 10
- Twister OS - MacOS/Win95-XP-10 (switchable)
Let’s look at these in a little more detail.
NOTE: Be aware that these OS images are being removed from the Internet. The Twister OS has a Home Page and hopefully, it remains available for download. If you want these images, you should find and download them as soon as you can.
iRaspbianThe OS has the appearance of MacOS, as shown in Figure 1. Everything from the startup sound to the desktop is straight MacOS. The desktop appears as a Mac system and feels like it. The iRaspbian OS can make it look like your Raspberry Pi is a very tiny Apple system.
FIGURE 1The desktop has a very smooth feel to it. Everything does appear to be just like a Mac system until you run an application. Say, for instance, you start ‘Finder’ you will see that the apps listed are Linux apps and not Mac apps. This is why I say the Apple portion is only ‘screen deep’.
To use the iRaspbian OS you need to download it first. Here are a few places to find it for direct download:
It is possible to download the image as a Torrent. You can perform a search on your favorite Torrent site or get the Torrent file at:
- https://archive.org/download/raspbianx/iRASPBIAN.xz - the Torrent download contains both iRaspbian and Raspbian X Night Hawk images
Once you have the iRaspbian image, which has a '.xz' extension, you only need to 'burn' the image to an SD Card. To 'burn' the image, you can use BalenaEtcher.
The image may take a while to ‘burn’ to the SD Card, but once it is done, you can put it in the Raspberry Pi and boot from it.
Once the OS is loaded, you will be asked to log into the system. The Username has already defaulted to 'pi' and the password is 'raspberry'.
After the desktop is loaded, you need to connect to your WiFi or use a direct connection. Be sure to set your time zone as well as the time and date. If needed, you can adjust your display settings for the monitor.
At this point, you are running what appears to be a MacOS system.
Raspbian X Night HawkThe OS has the appearance of Windows 10 as shown in Figure 2. After the desktop background is changed to another image on the SD Card it looks more like Windows as seen in Figure 3. The desktop appears as a Mac system and feels like it.
FIGURE 2FIGURE 3Just like iRaspbian, the desktop has a very smooth feel to it. The response time is very nice. Everything does appear to be just like a Windows system until you run an application. All of the Microsoft labeled apps are Linux apps.
For the Raspbian X Night Hawk OS, you can find it at:
It is possible to download the image as a Torrent. You can perform a search on your favorite Torrent site or get the Torrent file at:
- https://archive.org/download/raspbianx/iRASPBIAN.xz - the Torrent download contains both iRaspbian and Raspbian X Night Hawk images
Once you have the image, which has a '.xz' extension, you only need to 'burn' the image to an SD Card. To 'burn' the image you can use BalenaEtcher. If the extension is by chance ‘.zip’, then you only need to extract the ‘.xz’ file and then burn it.
The image could some time to ‘burn’. Wait for it to finish and place the SD Card in the Raspberry Pi and boot it.
After the OS is started you will be asked to log into the system. The Username already defaults to 'pi' and the password is 'raspberry'. My logon screen was only about a fourth of the whole screen size. You will need to adjust the monitor size once the system starts.
After the desktop is loaded you need to connect to your WiFi or use a direct connection. Be sure to set your time zone as well as the time and date.
At this point, you are running what appears to be a Windows 10 system.
Twister OSThe Twister OS is a lot easier to find at
TwisterOS.com. I downloaded version 1.5 and version 1.6 was just released as I was writing this article.
Click the 'Downloads' link at the top of the screen. Once the 'Downloads' page opens you can select which version you wish to download. I would suggest downloading the newest version.
The ‘TwisterOS’ file is a ZIP file which you need to extract and then use BalenaEtcher to ‘burn’ the ‘xz’ image to an SD Card. Once done, you can insert the SD Card into the RPi 4 and boot it. You will then see a screen similar to Figure 4. The screen is the ‘Twister OS’ Desktop which is set by default.
FIGURE 4You should see an icon on the screen called ‘ThemeTwister’ If you double click the icon you will be presented with the options as shown in Figure 5.
FIGURE 5Initially, you need to press ENTER to be able to choose the Theme you want to use. Then, you are presented with the Theme choices:
- RaspbianX FIGURE 6
- Nighthawk - FIGURE 2 (after you change the wallpaper)
- iRaspbian - FIGURE 1
- iRaspbian - Dark - FIGURE 7
- Raspbian95 - FIGURE 8
- Raspbian XP
- Twister OS - FIGURE 5
Once you make your selection you should see the Theme change in the background and then you will be asked to press ENTER to reboot the system. By rebooting the Theme will take complete effect when the system restarts.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 7FIGURE 8FIGURE 9As with iRaspbian, the screens look identical to the specific OS it is imitating. Intro sounds for iRaspbian and RaspbianXP are the same as the original Operating Systems.
NOTE: Do not confuse Raspbian95 with the Virtual Machine that is included in some of these systems. It is only a visual similarity and the programs you execute are those of Linux and not Windows.
Running these systems over a while may cause some people concern about their Raspberry Pi 4 overheating. If you have concerns then read on.
Checking TemperatureTo check the CPU temperature you can run the command 'cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp'. The value that is given you needs to be divided by 1000 to get the proper temperature. The value given is given in Celsius and you may need to convert it to Fahrenheit.
To verify on an RPi4 or another system you can run the command 'cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/type' which should come back with a result of 'x86_pkg_temp'. The type shows that the specified zone is the proper zone. To find the number of zones you can run the command 'ls /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone*' You should see 'zone0' to a higher value. Any of these could be the CPU on another system. The CPU will vary zone by the system.
If you want to check the Graphical Processor Unit (GPU) then use the command ‘vcgencmd measure_temp’. The value is in Celsius.
NOTE:Raspberry Pi Running Mac Os
The GPU command is specific to Raspbian.
Values 82 and above, in Celsius, are getting too hot; where values 100 and above are critical.
ConclusionFor some people, these Operating Systems can be a fun way to 'run' an OS that that reminds them of another system, but still be using Linux.
If you have a Raspberry Pi 4 and want to try something a little different, then definitely give these a whirl. You may be amazed at how smoothly the system runs.
In my previous posts, I came to the realization that the Raspberry Pi is not very fast! This results lots of chair spinning time while waiting for my projects to compile. A
After I did some brief research, I came across crosstool-ng. It enagbles anyone to create a toolchain to compile Raspberry Pi code directly on a (much faster) Macbook.
If you are unfamiliar with the process of compiling a toolchain on your own computer, let me be frank: it’s not fun.
Luckily, with this post you can get yours working in no time.
Update 8/29/16: I have updated this tutorial in several places for newer systems. I’m currently running a Macbook Pro with 10.11.6.
Note 8/29: This tutorial now is focused on the Raspberry Pi 3 B. Mac pro hard drive. Steps can be tweaked to account for older Pis
So without further ado lets do this thing.
Before we get started
Before we start anything I recently compiled the toolchain for RPi3. It will save you a whole bunch of time to download it here rather than go through this procedure.
These files include:
For those who want to continue for giggles, by all means…
Install Homebrew
You will need Hombrew to install some dependencies. If you haven’t already installed it you can run the command below:
Install crosstool-ng
Note: a few other dependencies get installed when crosstool-ng is compiled. Baby workout 1 1. Be prepared to wait a little while everything assembles.
Install gettext
Note: this is more of a precaution then a requirement. I believe by the end of this process that this was not necessary for getting crosstool-ng to work.
Create two case-sensitive disk images
Open up Disk utility. Click on the New Image button.
1. You need a disk at least 15GB in size. This will house all the source code and object files when all said and done.
2. The next disk can be exactly the same but only 250MB in size. (When fully compiled and compressed everything turned out to be around 107MB)
Note 8/29: for some reason there is a bug on OSX which prevents you from formating a case sensitive drive in Disk Utility. So create a non-case sensitive image and format it to a case sensitive one. The file system needs to be case sensitive.
Note* 8/29: Also, should you make a disk that is not the correct size, you can invoke the resize command to fix it!
Install GNU grep
Crosstools relies on the use of GNU grep. The grep built with OSX is not 100% exactly the same. So, let’s build it!
Note 8/29: this now can be done while installing crosstool-ng using the --with-grep option.
Edit paths.sh file
My paths.sh file was located here:
I changed the grep line from:
To:
Note 8/29: likely can be avoided with the note above. You can also edit your .bash_profile to temporarily set which grep to use
Load the Linux/GNU option
This will load a general Linux/GNU config. We’ll end up replacing the config but it gives us a good starting point.
Note 8/29: this is a better starting point than my original suggestion. The config file below will change the remaining settings to accomodate for the different processor.
Install config file
Download the config file here.
You will have to copy it to your case sensitive disk image and rename it to .config.
Modify the config file
Run the following in your working directory.
Change the following as needed. Note: This only needs to be changed if you change the names of the .dmg images.
Paths and misc options
Note: all of these are under the ** Paths ** section.
Local tarballs directory
I used /Volumes/xtools-build-env/src. Make sure you set yours to your setup.
Best database for mac. Working directory
Thundersoft drm removal 2 10 5. I used /Volumes/xtools-build-env/.build. Make sure you set yours to your setup.
Prefix directory
I used /Volumes/xtools/${CT_TARGET}. Make sure you set yours to your setup.
Note: the next few settings are under the ** Extracting ** section.
Stop after extracting tarballs
This option should be checked.
Parallel jobs
Note 8/29: new version already has this value set. You can leave it be.
Download and extract the packages
Run the following command:
The build command will stop after extracting all the sources.
Change source file
In ./.build/src/binutils-2.25.1/gold/gold-threads.cc you will need to change the file at line 284. Here is the before and after code blocks:
Change it to:
Update the ulimit
Ulimit controls the amount of resources allowed by a shell instance. In this case we need to increase this limit in order to prevent compilation errors.
Undo some the extract only config option
Undo one of the config settings we changed earlier. Open up:
Paths and misc options.
Note: the next few settings are under the ** Extracting ** section.
Begin the build!
Run:
Play the waiting game
Mac Os On Raspberry Pi 4 Pinout
Depending on how fast your setup is it may take a few hours to compile fully. If you’re impatient you can always get the binaries I just compiled here
In the end
By the time it’s done doing its thing you should have a fully capable cross platform toolchain for the Raspberry Pi! (Woot) An easy way to test it is to do the following:
(Hit ctrl-d to escape)
Copy test over to your Raspberry Pi.
Then ssh in and run the test executable
Other Notes
New notes as of 8/29 are as follows:
STOP/RESTART Crosstools now has a nifty stop and restart feature. Should a build break on a particular sub-component, you can actually fix the issue and continue the build from where it broke. It saves a ton of time. In order to take advantage of the feature you need to enable CT_DEBUG_CT_SAVE_STEPS in your .config
Then you can invoke the STOP or RESTART command:
ct-ng list-stepsct-ng build RESTART=cc_core_pass_1
Mac Os On Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
Building Static Becuase OSX does not build based on static libraries we need to make sure those options are disabled. This is already done in my config file but for those who are interested here are the flags:
Thank you to Rolando for posting this in the comments!
Many thanks
I used several blog posts and articles over the web to get this to work. Many thanks to their previous efforts.
Mac Os On Raspberry Pi 4 Projects
Last Modified: 2020.3.7
Mac Os On Raspberry Pi 4
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