Based on the Debian-derived PIXEL will bring the Raspberry Pi experience to x86, as the Raspberry Pi Foundation has declared, “We are not just creating the best desktop environment for the Raspberry Pi, but the best desktop environment, period.”

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has ported PIXEL OS, released this September, to PCs and Macs. (Both PC and Mac are actually based on x86 architecture, while the Raspberry Pi is based on ARM series CPUs, making this successful port very significant) (Aside from Mac OS and a particularly poor keyboard, there don’t seem to be other usable OS systems.)

PIXEL stands for “Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight”, meaning “Raspberry Pi’s improved lightweight Xwindows environment”, said Eben Upton, the founder of Raspberry Pi. “We think most users want such a desktop environment: a clean, neat, and modern user interface; productivity software and programming tools that enhance work efficiency, including free software and proprietary software.“

The idea of exploring other uses for this operating system has been on Upton’s mind over the past few months, as he wrote, “In the summer, we asked ourselves a simple question: If we love PIXEL so much, why do we require people to buy a Raspberry Pi to run it?”

Upton said he and his partners noticed that “there are a lot of old PCs and Macs lying around that can run x86 Debian quite well,” and they asked themselves, “What can we do for these machines?”

The answer now is “YES,” as the Raspberry Pi Foundation has released an x86 version of the operating system.

This operating system has low hardware requirements. Upton said PIXEL “will run on older machines like my ThinkPad X40, which only needs 512MB of memory.” Upton believes such hardware requirements are suitable for schools still using old PCs, meaning students can use the same PIXEL environment on x86 at school as they do on their Raspberry Pis at home.

PIXEL can boot from a DVD or USB drive, or you can install it on your computer. You can click “Read the original article” to try to download it, though some models of Macs may not be able to boot from this image. Upton also noted that this is still an early release version and is continuing to improve.

Currently, MBH has submitted an application to the foundation and hopes to participate in the development of PIXEL through crowd sourcing.

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