XFCE

Xfce 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!

Please also note that Xfce and other third-party modifications (all non .xo bundled applications) to your XO may be rendered inoperative when you upgrade the base OS to a new build. (See http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6317)

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": 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. NOTE: if you get a "Socket Error" that returns you to a prompt, use the up arrow to restore your original command and enter to restart the process.

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

• optional packages: xmms (audio player), orage (calendar), xfce-mixer (volume control), system-config-date (set datetime/timezone), genmon (generic monitor - can be used to output battery status, for example), systemload (shows CPU and memory usage)

# yum install xmms orage xfce4-mixer system-config-date xfce4-genmon-plugin xfce4-systemload-plugin

• installing firefox requires that you remove its exclusion from the XO's repository list
  • open the repository file with the following command:

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

NOTE: in the latest builds (here tested on candidate-691) the command should be:

# nano /etc/yum.repos.d/olpc-koji-update1.repo

• • remove the firefox entry from the last line so it looks like this:

exclude=seamonkey,mozplugger,kdebase,kernel

then save using CTRL+X and confirm with "y"

• • install Firefox by running this command

# yum install firefox

Manage WiFi Networks

You can use wifi-radar to manage your wireless connection within xfce

# yum install wifi-radar

You can run wifi-radar through the xfce menu under "Networking". After running it once, a file will be created at /etc/wifi-radar/wifi-radar.conf. Open this file in a text editor, and change the line which reads:

interface = eth1

to read:

interface = eth0

Now, running wifi-radar should allow you to see the available wireless networks and connect to one. You may need to disable the default wireless network manager, by running:

# /etc/init.d/NetworkManager stop

You can permanently disable network manager by

# /sbin/chkconfig NetworkManager off

If you want to run wifi-radar as a daemon which will automatically connect to a preferred network:

$ wifi-radar -d

Screen Brightness/Rotation, Sound Volume, and Battery Status Control

The keys on you XO can be easily made functional again by installing the rpm on this page: olpc-keybind. This RPM contains the scripts to perform the operations and the instructions to configure your default olpc user account to use them.

This rpm depends on xbindkeys. Because this rpm doesnt yet exist in the official repositry you have to do the following in a terminal (as root) to install it:

yum install xbindkeys
rpm -Uhv http://favias.org/files/olpc-keybind-1-2.noarch.rpm

To remove this functionality the following command as root in terminal will suffice:

yum remove olpc-keybind xbindkeys

Screen rotation note: Rotation does not automatically resize the windows. If you are using fullscreen mode this may be fixed by pressing Alt-F11 twice.

Displaying Battery Status in panel

• Install olpc-keybind rpm for the battery-status binary it provides
• use genmon (see above) to display the battery status in a toolbar
  • right-click on a blank spot on an Xfce toolbar, chose Add Item, select Generic Monitor and clicked Add
  • right-click the new Generic Monitor item, select Properties, and apply the following settings:
    • Command: battery-status
    • Label: B
    • Period: 300

Mounting Removable Filesystems

1. Insert SD card or usb drive.
2. Run thunar, the Xfce File Manager.
3. The removable media should appear in the left-hand column. Click on it to mount it. A df will show that it has been mounted in the appropriate place (/mount/VOLUME_NAME)
4. To unmount, right click on the media name in the same place and choose unmount.

Make Xfce the default environment

• in /home/olpc/ create a copy of .xsession-example called .xsession:

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

• edit the .xsession file to launch Xfce on startup:

# nano /home/olpc/.xsession

• • find the commented line that reads #exec xterm - below that line, add the following code:

exec startxfce4

• use CTRL+X to save and exit
• use CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE to restart X, starting 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.
  • You can prevent this behavior by disabling the startup logo animation:
    • Open the startup animation logo file /etc/init.d/0-boot-anim-start
    • Above the line saying "# i'm the child", change if os.fork() == 0: to if os.fork() == 'debug': to prevent the animation code from being executed
  • You can still have the startup logo animation and launch xfce:
    • Login as root
    • Disable z-boot-anim-stop

chkconfig --del z-boot-anim-stop

• • • Create a shell script /etc/init.d/unfreeze.sh with the following content

#!/bin/sh
mount -t sysfs /sys /sys
# unfreeze the display, which gets frozen at the end of the boot-anim
echo 0 >  /sys/devices/platform/dcon/freeze
umount /sys

• • • Link /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S99unfreeze.sh with /etc/init.d/unfreeze.sh

cd /etc/rc.d/rc5.d
ln -s ../init.d/unfreeze.sh /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S99unfreeze.sh

• • • Edit /etc/init.d/z-boot-anim-stop to change the string "5 99 99" to "5 98 98"
    • Add z-boot-anim-stop with the updated sequence number

chkconfig --add z-boot-anim-stop

• To make the original XO Sugar desktop the default boot again, rename the .xsession file to anything other than .xsession (.xsession.xfce for instance).

References

• OLPCNews Forum
• Free Like GNU
• Moving To Xfce On The XO
• Setting The XO Time And Date