Halos Update: A Browser-First OS for Raspberry Pi

I made an announcement late October 2025 about Halos, a new end-user friendly Raspberry Pi OS variant that is browser-first and thus accessible over any device. The first announcement turned out to be a bit premature as the initial foundation got thoroughly redesigned. But now, however, the dust is starting to settle!

Halos is built on top of standard Raspberry Pi OS Trixie but adds features that make it a hassle-free solution for onboard Raspberry Pis. First, there’s Cockpit that provides a web-based administration UI for the computer: you can use it to install/remove software, perform updates, manage services, view logs and change users and passwords.

Second, there’s the concept of container apps. Major apps are run as Docker containers, which provides isolation and security and easier, independent updates. Container apps are accessed using a browser, and there are major quality-of-life improvements baked in such as single sign-on (only one account and password for all container apps). Apps are available using easy names such as avnav.halos.local instead of port numbers such as halos.local:31331, and there is a touch-friendly and highly customizable landing page that is automatically populated by any newly installed apps. All container apps are deployed as Debian packages, so standard tools can be used to install them. Finally, Cockpit also has a separate Container App Store for easily installing available container apps. There’s even a plan to offer some marine desktop apps like OpenCPN as containerized, browser-based versions.

My own motivation for creating Halos is that I need a user-friendly (and developer-friendly!) operating system for the Hat Labs HALPI2 computers. However, Halos supports any standard Raspberry Pi device as well. Images are already available in multiple variants: headless, desktop, marine, HALPI2. HALPI2 can also be installed on top of existing Raspberry Pi OS Trixie installation.

Work is far enough that I would very much like to get test users who could provide feedback, bug reports and why not participate in the actual development as well!

For more information, see https://github.com/hatlabs/halos-distro.