This September, the Raspberry Pi Foundation released Pixel, a lightweight operating system with a clean desktop UI. Now, it has landed on PC and Mac platforms, allowing users to breathe new life into old hardware. Pixel is based on Linux, and you can download its image file. You can then burn the file to a DVD or create a bootable USB drive, allowing you to boot directly into the Pixel environment on any Mac or PC hardware with over 512MB of memory and an x86 processor.

This means that if you have an old laptop, like the original plastic-cased MacBook or an ancient ThinkPad, you can get it running a modern operating system again and use it for simple tasks, like browsing the web with the pre-installed Chromium. Pixel also comes with a suite of office software and programming tools, all based on Debian, which has extensive support for free software.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation will include a DVD boot disk in the upcoming issue of The MagPi magazine, but you can also download the image file and create your own boot tool. The foundation recommends using Etcher for creating the boot disk, which works quite well.

Currently, the Pixel for Mac and PC platforms is still a prototype, so you may encounter software bugs and hardware compatibility issues during use. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has noted that modern Mac computers often struggle to recognize the Pixel disk as a boot disk, which is a known issue. However, the foundation emphasizes that developing Pixel for Mac and PC platforms is very important to them, as they believe it will greatly assist schools in installing this operating system on old hardware. This way, students who use Raspberry Pi computers at home can use the same system environment at home and school; moreover, they genuinely hope to make Pixel the best desktop operating system on the market, free from hardware limitations.

Pixel also comes with a standard disclaimer: users must take responsibility for the risks of using Pixel and the safety of files on old computers. If you want to store files locally in Pixel, you must use a USB boot disk to gain write capabilities. However, the risks of revitalizing your old hardware this way are really quite low.

Translated by: Wang Canjun (@He Wuyu)

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