Last week marked the release of an updated Raspberry Pi OS that moved to Linux 6.18 LTS from its former Linux 6.12 kernel base along with making a number of other package updates. Given the jump to the newer Long Term Support kernel and other improvements, I ran some fresh benchmarks on the Raspberry Pi 5 (Raspberry Pi 500+) to see the performance difference out of the updated operating system.

Using the Raspberry Pi 500+ 16GB computer, I compared the performance of the prior release (2026-04-13) to the latest Raspberry Pi OS release (2026-06-18). Most significant is the kernel upgrade from Linux 6.12 to Linux 6.18 when it comes to the performance perspective.

GCC 14.2 remains the default compiler along with other common packages of the Debian 13 base used currently by the Raspberry Pi OS.