Raspberry Pi OS is based on the foundation of Google Chrome and ships in SD cards to work on Raspberry Pi hardware. By making changes to Chromium 84, the dedicated development team has been able to bring support for video conferencing apps. Alongside support for Microsoft Teams and Zoom, users can also tap into Google Meet for chats and meetings. In some ways, the company is late to the party considering the rise in usage of these apps this year. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of millions of people have been working remotely. Tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams have become essential for many workers, educators, and students. Now that Raspberry Pi OS is up to speed with the demand for these apps, users will get them on their device. “They should all now work smoothly on your Raspberry Pi’s Chromium,” says Simon Long, a user experience engineer for the company. That’s not the only major support news in this update. Raspberry Pi Trading has also confirmed it is dropping support for Adobe Flash Player. That falls in line with what other OS developers are doing, including Google on Chrome. Flash is simply too insecure these days, especially as it has mostly been replaced by standards like WebGL and HTML5. Adobe realizes this and Raspberry Pi’s decision comes at the right time: “Flash Player is being retired by Adobe at the end of the year, so this release will be the last that includes it. Most websites have now stopped requiring Flash Player, so this hopefully isn’t something that anyone notices,” adds Long.
