A Guide To Installing Lxde

[chris_c]

First of all you need to grab a tar ball from http://www.openpandora.org/firmware/

extract pandora-rootfs.tar.bz2 to an sd card an put an autoboot.txt on the root of the sd card as explained in the wiki

boot the sd card and open a terminal

run

sudo su
opkg update

then using

opkg install xxx

install the following angstrom-task-lxde lxde-common task-lxde-apps openbox-theme-clearlooks

now try installing lxsession - there should be a dependency problem - either force the install or uninstall the task package that conflicts and also lxsession-lite

edit the file /etc/pandora/conf/gui.conf add the following
LXDE;Lightweight full desktop;startlxde;lxde-logout

use the system settings tool to change the default desktop to LXDE

log out and then back in...

two things that are missing is I'm unable to get lxde session manager to allow you to shutdown (just sudo poweroff)
More importantly the battery monitor does work

let me know how you get on I might be able to help - if you are able to give decent feedback about whats not working...!


it does all kind of occur to me that in conjunction with usb networking you could have a boot sd that just contained opkg and little else - If there's anyone out there would be interested in making a minimal install like that pm so we can work together

 

[PokeParadox]

Thanks for the guide... I think I'll give this a shot, since I really do like lxde.

 

[mindlord]

Thank Chris. I had it working sans the clearlooks theme bit. I could actually get it to load, but no window manager, and for some reason the panel icons did nothing. I'll give ti a go when I get home. I really like LXDE, and I kinda hope they abandon XFCE later in favor of it. Provided it's stable.

 

[chris_c]

Thank Chris. I had it working sans the clearlooks theme bit. I could actually get it to load, but no window manager, and for some reason the panel icons did nothing. I'll give ti a go when I get home. I really like LXDE, and I kinda hope they abandon XFCE later in favor of it. Provided it's stable.

Its been rock stable for me - in fact lxde on multiple platforms in my experience has always been rock solid, I too seriously hope they ditch XFCE as LXDE preforms MUCH better - check out loading times for the arora browser for an obvious and really noticeable difference!

Where this idea that lxde is unstable has come from I don't know but its plain wrong!

 

[PokeParadox]

Worked out fine for me too, could even shutdown properly too. I would love for this to be tweaked up enough to become the default GUI.
EDIT: one issue I saw is that it doesn't respect sub-categories...

 

[HackModford]

why install this on a sd? cant I install to NAND?

 

[chris_c]

why install this on a sd? cant I install to NAND?

simply because I leave my nand virgin, I always boot from sd and modify that, I don't mind wearing out a £5 sd card - which seems to boot just as fast as nand - I really don't want to wear out nand - it also means if something really goes wrong with the files on the sd card I can just boot from nand and then rescue the sd - change setting and so forth.

I've not looked at spare capacity on nand not even how much room I used to install lxde - but I've always been under the impression nand space was limited?

If you choose to boot from nand all the time, then I see no reason you couldn't but be aware that updating your system with opkg can potentially cause problems and if you've broken the OS on nand you have no fall back...

 

[HackModford]

How do you force install lxsession?

I thought I knew but it keeps saying "cannot install package lxsession"

Or what do I need to remove? Will it break xfce? (or whatever you call it)

 

[mindlord]

I have been using this for two days now, and I have to say it's a massive improvement over xfce in terms of speed. It's not just noticeable, it's impressive. You will probably also want to install lxde-icon-theme or some applications and menus will not have icons.

It does break a few things though.
Gigolo will not connect to resources, for example. I haven't figured out what's causing it, but I will.
pcmanfm is fantastic, although it lacks some features that makes Thunar fantastic as well. pcmanfm is, however rock solid, which is where Thunar falls flat.

@hackmodford

sudo opkg install --force-overwrite lxsession

 

[HackModford]

In your opinion how does thunar fail?

 

[mindlord]

Thunar misbehaves in details view, and had a tendency to lock up when browsing remote shares.

 

[HackModford]

Yep just switched to it... it's awesome. But I can't really change any settings (in regards to the looks) Where does the pandora store it's default backgrounds?

 

[Farox]

I think a video of it in action would be cool to see ...maybe on next week ED video series ?

 

[mindlord]

You can run xfce4-power-manager-settings and check the option for taskbar icon. Then run xfce4-power-manager to get a simple battery meter.

 

[chris_c]

You can run xfce4-power-manager-settings and check the option for taskbar icon. Then run xfce4-power-manager to get a simple battery meter.

Nice!
i added the following file
/etc/X11/Xsession.d/20xfce-power-manager

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/xfce4-power-manager

Despite the fact I forgot to make it executable it still worked!
should be ok when booting xfce is there a better way to do this?

can you suggest a way to bind the Pandora key to the command lxpanelctl menu ?

Only 2 outstanding issues now really menu sub categories (colour me puzzled!) and powering down with the session manager...

 

[PokeParadox]

About the conflict... I just installed lxsession-lite and not lxsession and everything seemed fine.
Also I CAN shutdown from the menu
-> Logout
Then a menu appears with Shutdown, Reboot, Suspend, Hibernate and Logout.
Hitting Shutdown... turns off my Pand so... yeah, works here.

 

[mindlord]

Theoretically the LXDE session manager should allow you to run things on startup, but I haven't figure out where it's config files are, yet.

can you suggest a way to bind the Pandora key to the command lxpanelctl menu ?

If you press Fn Ctrl-Q (Ctrl-ESC) the LXDE menu opens, so if we can bind the Pandora key to Ctrl-ESC it will operate as expected.

Only 2 outstanding issues now really menu sub categories (colour me puzzled!) and powering down with the session manager...

I found a Xenity script that simulates a shutdown menu, I haven't tested it yet. See here.

The Debian wiki says that the user must be a member of the 'power' or on some systems 'powerdev' group for lxsession-logout to show the buttons. The Pandora has no such group. Perhaps haldaemon? I'm not sure. I don't think there is any hope of fixing the submenu issue easily.

 

[milkshake]

oooh I cant wait till you guys have made this work and easy to use

 

[chris_c]

I found a Xenity script that simulates a shutdown menu, I haven't tested it yet. See here.

I saw that too, but I'd kinda like to get to the bottom of the group or hald problem so it allows shutdown as intended!
there doesn't seem to be a HAL policy editor, its all a bit different (older!) than the desktop...

 

[chris_c]

Here are some trivial (but useful) scripts

as the battery icon can be a little difficult to see how "full" the battery is, a quick check icon can be made by putting a script in the Desktop folder of your home directory

sudo mousepad ~/Desktop/Battery

export BAT=`cat /sys/class/power_supply/bq27500-0/capacity`
zenity --info --text="battery $BAT %"

notice the direction of the single quote this is called a back tick operator which is rather useful in Makefiles

a nicer way to shutdown rather than sudo poweroff from the terminal is to make the following script

sudo mousepad ~/Desktop/shutdown

zenity --question --text="Are you sure you wish to shutdown?"
case $? in
  0)
    gksudo poweroff;;
  1)
    echo "do nothing!";;
esac

If you want to change the desktop wallpaper hold the mouse down in one place on the desktop select the appropriate option
You can do the same with the panel and for instance move it to the top of the desktop and slim it down to say 16px high...

Enjoy!