The Raspberry Pi's minimalist Pixel desktop environment finally comes to PC

Pixel or the Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight, has arrived on PC. It’s a name that will be familiar with anyone who’s into Raspberry Pi. Technically speaking, Pixel is a modified version of the LXDE X11 desktop environment for Debian, a flavour of Linux. Designed to work on the Raspberry Pi, this operating system is designed to be as lightweight as possible, while still being fully functional. As a desktop environment, Pixel is surprisingly feature-rich. A number of useful features are integrated into the installation by default and unlike normal Linux distributions, the Pixel ISO comes with most of the essential plug-ins that you’ll need. A number of programming tools are also pre-installed. As ArsTechnica explains, “Pixel is both clean and modern-looking, but more importantly, it’s useful.” The ISO is a 1.3GB download and you can either run it Live off a DVD or USB drive, or you can install it to your PC. The Raspberry Pi is a lightweight computer that won’t break the bank. In fact, it’s even cheaper than almost every smartphone in the market today. Pixel is by no means an alternative to Windows, but it should make for a good, alternative Linux desktop environment. The third generation Raspberry Pi (the model B) features a 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, 1GB RAM and a VideoCore IV 3D graphics core. You can purchase a unit for under Rs 3,000.