24 replies to this topic

[Mindovermaster]

I have installed Arch ARM on my Raspberry Pi. But it has left me with no Windows Environment.

So, I installed LXDE, according to this guide: https://wiki.archlin.../index.php/LXDE

I successfully installed it, but I can not get into LXDE through startx. So I read a bit further down that page. I read that i need to edit a few things.

When I run:

cp /etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart ~/.config/openbox

I get:

cp: cannot stat '/etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat '/etc/xdg/openbox/autostart': No such file or directory

And the guide tells me to edit a few files. I do not remember how to edit files in Arch. Been too long..

[xorangekiller]

The 'cannot stat' message produced by cp is telling you that those files don't exist. You probably don't have the package installed that contains them. Since I'm not an Arch user, I don't know which package that would be, but I'm sure that Arch has some alternative to Debian's 'dpkg -S /etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml'.

As for editing text files from terminal, you're probably looking for nano. If you're more familiar with vim or emacs, either of those would work too, but I'm assuming you're not based on the context. One does not simply forget about vim!


Disclaimer: Some of what I am about to say is Debian specific since I have a heavy background in Debian, not Arch. My hope is that it will guide you in the right direction.

The reason that startx doesn't do anything by default, even after you have installed LXDE, is because you haven't told it what to do. It doesn't inherently know which desktop environment you want to use or even which ones are available unless you tell it explicitly. While many other distros will at least keep track of which desktop environments are installed through the package manager and attempt to set sane defaults, that is not an elegant approach based on the Arch philosophy, so Arch doesn't provide such a mechanism (that I am aware of).

Your next step should probably be to search the Arch wiki for information related to setting the default desktop environment. In Debian this can be done quite simply using the command 'update-alternatives --config x-session-manager'. Similarly, if you installed a display manager in Debian, such as lightdm, it would be automatically configured and give you a list of installed desktop environments on next boot. If you wish to change your display manager in Debian, you can run 'dpkg-reconfigure <display_manager_name>'.


Edit: After a quick search based on the above information, I believe that the following two Arch wiki articles should help you. The first one is for setting the default session manager for your user and the second one details setting the default display manager for the system.
https://wiki.archlin...dex.php/Xinitrc
https://wiki.archlin...Display_Manager

[Mindovermaster]

Nano, that's it. Thanks. I'll see what now I can do with that.

[Mindovermaster]

OK, scratch that idea. I just used Raspebian "wheezy" on it. I'll mess with arch later.

[xorangekiller]

Does that mean that you got LXDE working? That's good news, at least.

[Mindovermaster]

Yeah, Raspebian is preloaded with LXDE.

[Corvini]

I'm getting my Raspberry PI (model B 512mb) in three weeks, and I'll be installing arch at that point. I'll probably use xfce or razorqt as my desktop environment.

[Mindovermaster]

Yeah, I have the Model B with 256mb, but there is a firmware update that bumps it up to 512.

http://www.raspberry...g/archives/2180

[xorangekiller]

Um... I don't think that post is telling you that you can install a firmware update and suddenly have 512 MB of RAM instead of 256 MB. It is announcing the new 512 MB Model B and (in the updates) describing a firmware update for the 512 MB version that allows you to adjust how much RAM is dedicated to the GPU instead of available for normal use.

[Mindovermaster]

Oh, I misread that, sry. I looked at it fast when a friend mentioned it. Then that reminded me of it.

[firey]

I just ordered my Model B (512mb Ram) Raspberry PI. Won't get it for another month and a bit (I think they estimated 40 days). Also going to go with Arch, however I am unsure the DE. I run arch on an older PC with Cinnamon as the DE (ontop of gnome/x). Not sure how viable it is with the Arm version.

[Mindovermaster]

With the Raspberry, you want the lowest hogging DE you can get. That's why Raspebian (hit off Debian) was set up with LXDE.

I once ran it with XMBC, too, and it was rather slow.

[xorangekiller]

RAM is really the limiting factor; your processor is more than powerful enough. With 512 MB of RAM you may be able to run a DE that is a little more resource intensive, but I would still go for fairly low resource. XFCE or LXDE are probably your best choices for a full desktop environment. Although if all you need is a window manager, you can get away with even lower resource consumption by using something like Openbox, Fluxbox, or Awesome.

That said, I have been working on getting MATE running under Debian Wheezy on my PowerBook G4, which is similarly resource constrained to the Raspberry Pi. The biggest differences are that my PowerBook has a less powerful graphics card and 1 GB of RAM. However, GNOME 2.30 ran quite nicely under Debian Squeeze. If you're interested in my method (and a challenge - I have only tested this method on AMD64 and PowerPC, not ARM), let me know.

[firey]

Mindovermaster, on 03 November 2012 - 03:38, said:

With the Raspberry, you want the lowest hogging DE you can get. That's why Raspebian (hit off Debian) was set up with LXDE.

I once ran it with XMBC, too, and it was rather slow.

Yea, well the 512mb ram will help, as I can allocated x amount to the gpu. However my thought is that cinnamon is pretty slim. I plan on using it as a media-streamer rather than day to day use PC. So the DE isn't a big deal. I mean, potentially I can do a no de, and get QT installed, and try to find some QT players as QT can run DE-less in a custom frame, and has support for embedded devices.

[firey]

So, got my Pi yesterday. Got it all setup with arch, have opted to not install a DE at this point. All the video players I tried chugged, and weren't very fluid. I found this was due to using the cpu for processing (as well as other things). I found that omxplayer (the RPi dedicated player) was on the AUR. I got it installed and running, it decoded an x264 file no problem no lag. I could also do some tweaks and set some more memory aside for the gpu but as of now there is no point. I have samba installed with all the commands memorized for mounting my share ( I will probably add it to the fstab at some point).

Tomorrow will probably write a couple apps in QT to give me a nicer looking interface for browsing shares and starting videos and such. But yea, with the fact I can ssh into it and start videos streaming without needing to attach kb and mouse to it, I think it will work perfect as a stand-alone media streamer.