⚡ Raspberry Pi OS: October update polishes the desktop

Raspberry Pi shipped a new Raspberry Pi OS release on 6 October 2026, focused on desktop stability and built on Linux kernel 6.18.50 LTS. As detailed by Linuxiac, the most visible change concerns the dock and taskbar: switching between them no longer resets appearance settings, and resizing or repositioning them in the Control Centre now correctly updates the desktop margins.

The Control Centre — the in-house replacement steadily rolling out since 2025 — gets the bulk of the work: explanatory tooltips in the Widgets panel, instant application of Screens panel changes, refreshed default shortcuts, and fixes for several segmentation faults during panel initialization. Removable storage handling improves too: the ejecter plugin can now auto-mount encrypted drives, and an automount conflict between PCManFM and ejecter has been resolved.

On the desktop side, drag-and-drop onto list views works again in PCManFM, tray icons no longer all vanish when one closes, and the panel menus receive a long list of fixes (text search, misplaced submenus, keyboard shortcuts). Under the hood it is the 6.18.50 LTS kernel plus many visual fixes in a release covering everything from the Pi 3B to the Pi 500+, including CM4 and CM5.

To update an existing system: sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade — Raspberry Pi recommends full-upgrade so dependency changes are handled. Sources: Linuxiac, official Raspberry Pi changelog.