Raspberry Pi's Pixel Now Supports X86 Architecture

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Raspberry Pi introduced its PIXEL (which stands for Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight) in September this year. It is a Linux desktop experience based on Debian Linux which is a low-resource desktop environment but more full featured than a typical Raspberry Pi distribution.

Raspberry Pi has now updated its PIXEL with support for x86 platforms as a Debian and Linux combined distribution reports ArsTechnica. So now, users can enjoy the features and all the benefits of PIXEL on PCs and Macs. However, the port is still in experimental stages so it is recommended that you backup any important files before you boot into PIXEL environment.

Eben Upton, the founder of Raspberry Pi foundation, said "our best guess as to what the majority of users are looking for in a desktop environment. Put simply, it's the GNU/Linux we would want to use."

The PIXEL is a clean, modern looking and a functional Linux distribution with a range of productivity suites installed and even comes with an Adobe Flash browser plug-in. The company has also replaced its legacy Epiphany browser with Chromium browser as the default internet browser as reported by Official Raspberry Pi blog.

One of the best things about PIXEL is that it also supports older hardware. A PC with 512 Megabytes of RAM is required to run PIXEL. It can be downloaded as an ISO image which can be burnt on a CD/DVD or written to a bootable USB disk can also be created.

It runs and installs like any other Linux distribution. However, varying hardware and software configurations might introduce some minor issues while working with PIXEL as the port is still in experimental stages.

With this update, PIXEL has now managed to get more versatile and portable and does not require Raspberry Pi to function. It can be installed in PCs and Macs just like a normal Linux distro. However, a completely bug-free distribution might take months to develop.