Raspberry Pi Releases Experimental Version of Pixel for PCs and Mac OS

[engine]

Raspberry Pi has released an experimental version of Debian+PIXEL for x86 platforms.

Simply download the image, burn it onto a DVD or flash it onto a USB stick, and boot straight into the familiar PIXEL desktop environment on your PC or Mac. Raspberry Pi Releases Experimental Version of Pixel for PCs and Mac OS [raspberrypi.org]

[Robert Charlton]

I'm completely new to this area... haven't looked into PIXEL... and not even Linux. Please forgive completely off the wall questions....

I'm assuming this sort of sums it up...

a low-consequence environment for messing about

So, is this the Snapchat of operating systems, or is it like a toybox to learn what can be done with an operating system. Is it going to evolve into systems of old machines writing to leftover SD cards and old USB sticks? What about security and malware? Suppose you create something worth saving? Etc?

I'm a little bit curious whether it's an educational toy that can eventually be used to perform necessary computing tasks in isolation. I'm sure I wouldn't have asked these questions if engine's post and the Raspberry Pi site weren't here.

Thoughts?

[iamlost]

Raspberry Pi was built to take computing - and programming - to the third world and into classrooms; basically a simple very small motherboard aka the guts to get one started. I loved it as it took me back zillions of years to when I first started and one had to seriously think about constraints and scope. It has become unbelieveably popular.

PIXEL was, I think, initially seen as a bridge for students - so that they could do their R-Pi homework on their fancy smancy computers. Then (or perhaps they were visionary enough to see from the get go) someone saw that there is a use case for a clean lightweight desktop so they are now promoting it generally.

Might light a fire under the obese all things to all people clunkers out there.