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, system-config-time - set datetime/timezone, genmon - generic monitor (can be used to output battery status), systemload - shows cpu and mem usage.
#yum install orage xfce4-mixer system-config-time 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
- 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 installing system-config-services:
yum install system-config-services
Run system-config-services, uncheck NetworkManager, and save. If you want to run wifi-radar as a daemon which will automatically connect to a preferred network:
wifi-radar -d
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 disabling the startup logo animation:
- Open the startup animation logo file /etc/init.d/0-boot-anim-start
- Find the line "i'm the child" and make sure everything is commented down to (but excluding)the first s.close(). Make sure not to comment the s.close() line or your xo will never finish booting.
- To make the original XO Sugar desktop the default boot again, rename the .xsession file to anything other than .xsession (.xsession.xfce for instance).