How to install XFCE?

[Peter Bolch]

After having installed Robert Nelson's 13.04 Ubuntu rootfs with the Wandboard kernel (I got 1920x1050 on my DVI monitor for the first time !!) I would like to install XFCE now. With another board I own installing XFCE4 and starting it with startx is enough. How is this done with Wandboard? xinit reports to be unable to connect to x-server.

Peter

[mmcv2008]

This is fairly simple

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xfce4

should make it.

[ARM Fan]

Hello,

I was in the same situation. The commands from mmcv2008 install only very basic xfce4. I had also troubles starting it manually. Finally, I installed whole xubuntu-desktop finally, just because I was not interested in trying around that much.

Maybe this link helps you: https://wiki.archlinux.de/title/Xfce#Xfce_starten BTW, I had do do some  dpkg-reconfigure on some x11 packet and allow all users to start an xserver session.

[Peter Bolch]

Thanks for your reply. That's what I did. I also installed
xubuntu-desktop as ARM Fan suggested. Installation was ok, but starting
XFCE via startx or startxfce4 I got "Fatal server error: no screens
found", "xinit: giving up", "xinit: unable to connect to X server:
Connection refused" and "xinit:server error. What's wrong or missing?

Peter

[ARM Fan]

Hello,

maybe it sounds stupid, but did you wait long enough?

After installing xubuntu-desktop, I got to tty1 and after some time, I was on tty7 where some strange error messages from plymouth appeared and then after 30-60 secs the login manager appears. If I try to start xserver in the meantime from tty1 I get also an error as X server is already started. So maybe you just have to wait? The first time with my slow SD card it took quite a long time.

[Peter Bolch]

Thanks for your reply. Waiting did not solve the problem.

With Debian Wheezy instead of Ubuntu XFCE worked out of the box, however. I even got 1920x1080 with my DVI computer monitor without changing uEnv.txt.

Peter

[ARM Fan]

Great you could solve it.

The resolution issue is interesting. Does this work if you reboot several times? As far as I know, for some people the correct resolutions works because EDID reading at least sometimes works. Could you check dmesg for things concerning EDID? It would really interest me. Try "dmesg | grep -i edid". Thanks!

[Peter Bolch]

Am 04.09.2013 10:17, schrieb ARM Fan:
> Great you could solve it.
>
> The resolution issue is interesting. Does this work if you reboot
> several times? As far as I know, for some people the correct
> resolutions works because EDID reading at least sometimes works. Could
> you check dmesg for things concerning EDID? It would really interest
> me. Try "dmesg | grep -i edid". Thanks!
>

I have tried five times, it always worked. I am using Robert Nelson's
3.0.35-wand6.3 kernel and wheezy root file system.

dmesg gives

[ 2.806636] mxc_hdmi: Read EDID again

[ 3.353715] mxc_hdmi: No modes read from edid


Peter

[Peter Bolch]

I should add, that I always had 1024x768 with WB's Ubuntu 12.04. If I changed the resolution to 1920x1080 via bootargs it was even worse (640x480). No it is 1920x1080, hardware unchanged (both Wandboard and display).

[mmcv2008]

Have you tried to play a video or streaming live TV?
If yes - what is the CPU load and does it play fine without any problems - like on RPi with omxplayer?

[Peter Bolch]

Am Donnerstag, 5. September 2013 10:56:53 UTC+2 schrieb mmcv2008:

Have you tried to play a video or streaming live TV?
If yes - what is the CPU load and does it play fine without any problems - like on RPi with omxplayer?

I could play a video without a problem in principal. I could not swich to fullscreen, however. CPU usage was about 50 % according to cpu graph.

Peter

[mmcv2008]

OK - this shows it is not really using the HW acceleration - on a RPi a streamed SD video only requires about 22% upscaled to 1920x1080
So as long this is not working the wandboard is of no use for me.
Maybe I test a cubieboard or cubieboard2.

[Martin Wild]

 Dont try this!

Cubieboard is a nice piece of hardware (I personally own one) but its video capabiliies ouside Android are not really useful . Xbmc runs sloppy and vlc only has command line until now. the rpi is doing these things far better.

Regards, Martin