How to run Kivy on SUSE system using the frame buffer instead of X

[David Goadby]

I can see that you can run Kivy from the command line on a Raspberry Pi (Rpi) as it is writing to the frame buffer. I tried the same thing on a SUSE 13.2 system and I get runtime errors complaining about not finding the output device.

Kivy does run from the KDE desktop (ie under X) so I know I have installed everything ok but not from a virtual console terminal. (tty1 etc)

The whole idea of moving to Kivy from GTK is I need to have a GUI without the overhead of X and a desktop; I want a dedicated application system only.

So, if Kivy runs on an ARM based Rpi, it should also be possible for it to work on an 80x86 based PC.

I can see a device /dev/fb0 which must be a frame buffer device so, how to I tell my Kivy demo to use it?

[Alexander Taylor]

The raspberry pi uses a platform-specific window provider. I don't think we have this functionality on the desktop - I looked into it once, and it seemed that it could be technically possible on newer GL versions (not sure where the cutoff is), but even if so it would probably need a new window provider for Kivy.

A more practical alternative would be to use a lightweight distro and desktop choice, e.g. little more than X itself (you wouldn't need most desktop components). You can even run Kivy with wayland, though nobody has tested this much.

[David Goadby]

On Monday, 2 November 2015 01:52:18 UTC, David Goadby wrote:

Ok, thanks Alex, I might look at the minimal X desktop idea. I did see somewhere where this could be created in Python which would be an interesting exercise. The newer GL versions is getting a bit too serious at this time. As my current deliverable is RPi based then at least Kivy works on this platform without problems.