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from the something-to-try-while-digesting-your-turkey dept.
In a rather curious turn, the Raspberry Pi foundation has released an x86 PC port of its PIXEL+Debian Linux desktop environment.
PIXEL (which is a clunky backronym for Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight) is an extensively modified version of the LXDE X11 desktop environment. It was originally released in September for use with Raspberry Pi single-board computers, but now it has also been packaged up for x86 PCs. You can boot your Windows or Mac PC into the PIXEL desktop environment right now, if you so wish.
In the words of Eben Upton, founder of the foundation, PIXEL is "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." To that end, PIXEL is both clean and modern-looking, but more importantly it is useful, with a wide range of productivity software and programming tools pre-installed. PIXEL doesn't eschew proprietary software, either; it even comes with the Adobe Flash browser plug-in.
Can any PIXEL users comment?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 25 2016, @12:08AM
I really hate the confusion. In one place (title here) it says "X86 Pcs" (thats the correct thing to say, though is should be "x86" and "PCs"), in another its "Windows or Mac PC" (Why mention some example OSs you might already have on your PC?) and https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pixel-pc-mac/ [raspberrypi.org] says simply "PC or Mac" which makes little sense (My Mac or personal computer?).
Your computer (PC) is hardware that may or already have one or more OSs. A Mac is a particular kind of PC (made by Apple), and Mac OSX is the operating system they also provide. Most (but not all) Macs have x86 processors, and the same is true for PCs with Windows.
This isn't hard to get right. Soylent's title is more correct than the primary source, and the secondary source. Thanks; keep up the good work, but I wish everyone else would do better ;)
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Sunday December 25 2016, @03:55AM
Well, the confusion goes all the way back to 1981. In the context of software "PC" often means an "IBM Personal Computer model 5150 compatible". This was often shortened to just "PC" although the same time, "Personal Computer" by itself meant any machine one could put on a desk and have control over.
This was an important distinction for a very long time. It was important to know if your software was for a "PC", a "Macintosh", or some other hardware platform.
On many newer computers you can still literally attach a USB floppy drive and boot IBM PC-DOS 1.0, if it is stuffed on a 3.5" disk correctly, and run IBM PC programs such as Lotus 1-2-3.
Although the latest computers have cut compatiblity down so much once BIOS booting is gone, and Intel Macs never had that, they are no longer in any way IBM PC compatible.
And on devices where you can't boot anything other than the approved, locked down, OS, they aren't even personal computers any more.
So anyway, blame IBM for using a crappy name.