Oberon is a complete software environment for personal computers. It includes both the Oberon operating system and the Oberon programming language.

This version of Oberon, named Oberon Pi, emulates the Oberon system on a Raspberry Pi 400, using the Raspberry Pi OS as the host operating system.

Oberon Pi runs as an application in the Raspberry Pi OS. When you execute the Oberon Pi command, a window opens on the Pi OS desktop. This window is the Oberon display, and it works like a separate computer running the Oberon system, with its own windows, command menus, and file system.

The original Oberon system includes many unusual user interface elements. These elements make the system worthy of study, both as a historical software artifact, and as a case study in user interface design.

But the original system also includes a few non-key features (such as mouse interclicking and opaque command names) which make the system difficult to learn.

The primary goal and purpose of Oberon Pi is instructional: to make the original Oberon system more accessible, by updating the non-key user interface elements to contemporary software standards, while preserving the key elements that make Oberon unique.

–  Raspberry Pi 400 computer
–  32-bit Raspberry Pi OS (bookworm or bullseye)
–  Desktop computer monitor (19" or greater)

For details see the Oberon Pi Setup Guide.

The Oberon system was originally developed in the late 1980s by Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht. In 2013 the system was re-implemented by Wirth and Paul Reed to run on a custom RISC processor. In 2014 an emulator for the RISC processor was developed by Peter De Wachter. Oberon Pi is a port of the emulator to the Raspberry Pi OS.