Raspberry Pi Brings A Taste Of Linux To PC And Mac With PIXEL Desktop

If you have an old computer that you'd love to breathe some new life into, there are plenty of different Linux distributions to choose from. None other than the Raspberry Pi Foundation has just added its own distribution to that list with PIXEL.

A few months ago, the RPi Foundation released PIXEL for use on its RPi devices, and after a successful launch, its founder decided to invest time and energy into a fork of the OS that can run on regular x86 machines. This version of PIXEL is identical in all regards to the RPi version with the exception of missing Wolfram Mathematica and Minecraft licenses.

It seems like every company out there wants a product called "Pixel", but RPi Foundation has come up with one of the most clever acronyms for it: "Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight". It's designed to offer everything that someone would need on a regular desktop PC while making older hardware relevant again.

The primary minimum spec is that the PC have at least 512MB of memory, which should be quite feasible for any notebook or desktop released in the past decade. You have the option of installing off of a DVD, or a flash drive, with Etcher being the recommended tool for accomplishing the latter. If you're a fan of magazines, you can also pick up the latest issue of The MagPi and take advantage of an included disc.

Full installation instructions can be found at the link below. But before you take the plunge, be sure to backup your data! Installing PIXEL on a PC will wipe whatever data was on there, so play it safe!