XFCE

XCFE is a lightweight but powerful desktop environment that will work well on the XO. The following is a tutorial for using XFCE on the XO based on the article from the Free Like GNU article and several forum posts.

Preamble

Please read the following steps before proceeding to make sure you understand what is involved! We take no responsibility for you making your XO unbootable. Although the process is reasonably safe for your XO, you should know how to and have the ability to wipe the XO and start fresh using a USB stick incase you get into trouble!

Instructions

Get Root

• Establish a connection to the internet. You will need the ability to connect to the internet to retrieve and update files from the OPLC's repositories. "yum" is the command that will retrieve the files you request and it will automatically install them. You will need to have "root" access to use yum.
• Get "root"! To gain root, use the terminal activity and type "su" at the prompt and hit the return key. Your command prompt will now end with "#" this means you have "root" and can change any file on the computer.

$ su
#

Install Packages

• Install xfce, this will give you a very basic desktop environment and the ability to customize it. This will download about 40MBs to ram then install the files automatically.

# yum install xfdesktop xfce-utils xfce-mcs-plugins xfce4-session

• • some optional packages.. orage - calendar, xfce-mixer - volume control, genmon - generic monitor (can be used to output battery status), systemload - shows cpu and mem usage.

#yum install orage xfce4-mixer xfce4-genmon-plugin  #xfce4-systemload-plugin

• • installing firefox requires that you remove its exclusion from the XO's repository list

#nano /etc/yum.repos.d/olpc-koji-ship2.repo
#yum install firefox

• • tuxpaint, gimp, and gcompris and other popular applications can be found in the repos. Simply install with yum!

#yum install tuxpaint gimp gcompris

• • • start tuxpaint with 1024x768 and fullscreen!

$tuxpaint --1024x768 --fullscreen

Make XFCE the default environment

• copy /home/olpc/.xsession-example to /home/olpc/.xsession

#cp /home/olpc/.xsession-example to /home/olpc/.xsession 

• edit the .xsession file to make xfce start

# nano /home/olpc/.xsession

• • find the commented line that reads "#exec xterm" add "exec startxfce4" (without quotes or # sign) then ctrl-x to save.
• cross your fingers
• ctrl-alt-backspace will restart X and should start XFCE.

Trouble?

• If you reboot and get stuck at the XO logo (with circle around it), hold down power to shutdown then power up again. I'm not sure why this works...
• You can prevent this behavior by editing the startup logo file in /etc/init.d/ --details to come...
• rename the .xsession file to go back to original XO Sugar desktop.

References

OLPCNews Forum Free Like GNU