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Background:

I want to use my Raspberry Pi as a HTPC mostly, hence I want it to be optimized for a HTPC. However, I also want to be able to add other uses, for eg: as a NAS, torrent client, backup server etc.

For this I've OpenElec, XBian and RaspBMC as options.

OpenElec is ruled out since it is optimized extremely for HTPC and terribly difficult to add a Desktop (LXDE). Between XBian and RaspBMC, I tried both and loved RaspBMC.

Question:

How do I install LXDE (just usable is good, nothing fancy) on RasBMC?

PS: Would be nice if the solution works on XBian too as that they Debian spinoffs and very similar.

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Dheeraj Bhaskar
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2 Answers2

5

Research. Research. Research.

After extensively researching this on the web. Trying out many solutions. Here's the one that worked for me.

Steps:

1. Install lxde-core

sudo apt-get install lxde-core xserver-xorg xinit

2. Fix the Putty X11 proxy: wrong authorization protocol

Refer my own answer here on superuser

Bonus Tip:

Since a lot of packages needed to be installed I speeded up the installation by downloading the needed packages into the cache for apt-get using this:

sudo -i
cd /var/cache/apt/archives/
apt-get -y --print-uris install lxde-core xserver-xorg xinit > debs.list
egrep -o -e "http://[^\']+" debs.list | xargs -l3 -P5 wget -nv
apt-get install lxde-core xserver-xorg xinit
exit

since you get a text editor and a neat icon theme (else icons are transparent) among a few basic things.

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Dheeraj Bhaskar
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0

  • On OSMC, you have to enter the terminal by clicking on Shutdown option and then on Exit. Wait until the loading screen re-appears, then press Esc.

  • log in using username oscm, default password oscm (should be changed later with passswd)

  • Install LXDE with

    sudo apt-get install lxde-core xserver-xorg xinit

    or to get some more usefull programs for a start (about 300MB) use

    sudo apt-get install lxde-core xserver-xorg xinit --install-suggests
sudo apt-get install pidgin-otr haveged icedove

  • use startx to start the LXDE session

Note: I encountered a crash, when starting OSMC from within the lxde startmenu, so to use OSMC, I have to reboot then

Alltogether my installation with OSMC and LXDE just uses 1.9 GB so this is just a small fraction of my SD card.

TODO:

add a select option at boot time to choose which surface to start

rubo77
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