The use of Raspberry Pi as a minicomputer is not something new, but the truth is that the software that it can support is quite limited unless we are programmers.
However, with the arrival of the Raspberry Pi 3, the power has increased on the famous SBC board and that has caused distributions and programs to rain down on the platform. Among the drops of that rain we find Pixel, a Gnu desktop that is optimized for use on low-resource computers, on Raspberry Pi boards.
Pixel will be the desktop that will replace LXDE in Raspbian
Pixel is a desktop that will incorporate the new versions of Raspbian, the Debian-based distribution for Raspberry Pi. This desktop will replace the old LXDE, a lightweight desktop that will soon cease to be developed and that was already quite out of date if we consider other desktops. Thus, its image is the main change of Pixel. Pixel changes its entire look, approaching the current versions of Apple and Microsoft, softening fonts, remodeling windows, etc ... All in order to give a new image to the operating system.
The home screen has also been changed, including session management and looks similar to current Gnu / linux distributions. In terms of software, Pixel incorporates RealVNC, SenseHAT, and Chromium as user programs.
The use of the latter is due to the fact that Epiphany is a browser that has become outdated, in this regard Chromium has been chosen, which is more current and incorporates certain interesting technologies and plugins for the user as the ad blocker or the support of certain multimedia codecs. But the most interesting thing is the inclusion of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off buttons, something that the previous desktop did not have and this one does incorporate it, facilitating use for users.
To get Pixel, you can download the last raspbian image that already incorporates it or use the update manager if we already have Raspbian, in this case we have to open the terminal and write the following:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install -y rpi-chromium-mods sudo apt-get install -y python-sense-emu python3-sense-emu sudo apt-get install -y python- sense-emu-doc realvnc-vnc-viewer
With this, not only Pixel but the rest of the software will be added.
In general, the appearance of Pixel does not mean a drastic change within the software for SBC boards, however it does improves the user experience of Raspberry Pi as a computer, something very interesting and that frankly, is the greatest use that the raspberry computer has at the moment Do not you think?