Archlinux: Wayfire Image for Odroid C4/HC4

[jgmdev]

Arch Linux is a lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. Wayfire is a lightweight Wayland desktop environment comparable to Weston but with much more features that actually make it yours, Wayfire is like the Compiz for Wayland but completely stand alone. As I mentioned in other posts I worked on a shell script to generate disk images out of ArchLinux tar files (more details about the ArchLinux Disk Image Generator on Github) and now I added support for the Wayfire Desktop Environment with GPU acceleration and since it is lite in resources (compared to GNOME) it runs lovely.

What is Included?

• Latest Wayfire Desktop Environment, sway, weston, plain gnome-shell.
• GDM as display manager with wayfire set as the default session.
• Wifi driver for wifi Module 5.
• Linux 5.10.x with panfrost patches from chewitt and other patches from tobetter.
• Bluetooth (blueman)
• Networking with NetworkManager
• Pre-configured cpupower with known working settings.
• Yay AUR helper.
• Pamac software center.
• Use of Arc desktop theme and Papirus icon theme by default.
• Preconfigured Wayfire bindings (Press SuperKey + c to customize).
• SSH Enabled.
• Bigger and more readable tty font.
• MPV and VLC video players.
• A nice space.jpg wallpaper!

Here are some basic screenshots/video:



Wayfire Configuration Tool (SuperKey + c)



Wayfire Built-in applications menu



Wayfire Videos on the Developer Channel



Installation

The process of burning the image into a SD or EMMC card should be the same as with other images and is well documented in other places so I will not write about that. Besides that, the image doesn't boots from petitboot unless you have an updated petitboot installed (20200721 release or newer seems to work) and compatible display (otherwise you will get a blank screen), if not you will need to boot directly from emmc or sdcard.

Login Credentials:
username: alarm
password: alarm

Administration:
username: root
password: root

Don't forget to change the default password for added security.

Setup

With latest image, after booting to the login manager wait some seconds because the system will grow the partition and setup locales.

Connect to a wifi network by opening a terminal with CTRL + ALT + t and typing nmtui-connect.

A list of keyboard bindings can be seen by inspecting the Wayfire Config Manager which you can launch with SuperKey + c, from the applications menu or by pressing SuperKey + a to launch wofi (similar to dmenu but for Wayland) and typing wcm. Here is a partial bindings reference:

1. SuperKey + a - open application with wofi
2. SuperKey + shift + a - execute command with bemenu
3. SuperKey + c - wayfire config manager
4. SuperKey + e - launch file manager/explorer
5. SuperKey + t - drop down terminal
6. Ctrl + Alt + t - launch regular terminal
7. SuperKey + w - launch firefox
8. SuperKey + q - close an open application
9. SuperKey + l - logout, shutdown, reboot, etc... with wlogout
10. SuperKey + Numpad_# - different window positioning shortcuts that make sense
11. SuperKey + ArrowKeys - Move window to different workspaces
12. SuperKey + Alt + ArrowKeys - Move to different workspaces
13. SuperKey + f - make window fullscreen
14. SuperKey + shift + f - force scale a window into fullscreen
15. SuperKey - Workspaces View

That is a list of bindings that come to mind, you can see them all on the Wayfire Config Manager.

What Works?

Triple A Games

OpenArena - sudo pacman -S openarena
Cendric - sudo pacman -S cendric-git
SuperTux - sudo pacman -S supertux
MineTest - sudo pacman -S minetest
Chromium B.S.U - sudo pacman -S chromium-bsu
Neverball - sudo yay -S neverball
teeworlds - sudo pacman -S teeworlds
supertuxkart - sudo pacman -S supertuxkart

Video

MPV with video acceleration.
KODI sudo pacman -S kodi-wayland.

Development

codelite IDE for C/C++, PHP, NodeJS development sudo pacman -S codelite-git

and more...

Known Issues

gnome-control-center doesn't fully works under wayfire, seems like some background service needs to be running, to configure the wifi run nmtui-connect and for bluetooth use blueman.

Other Images I have Worked on

Odroid N2 ArchLinux Headless
Odroid N2 ArchLinux GNOME
Odroid N2 ArchLinux Wayfire
Odroid N2 ArchLinux XFCE
Odroid C4 ArchLinux GNOME
Odroid C4 ArchLinux XFCE

Changes Log

Date - 05/01/2021
* Increased xfce4 dropdown terminal width to centralize better on the screen.
* Added wl-color-picker (use Super + shift + p to launch color picker)
* Replaced wayland-logout with wlogout for the app menu logout button which offers an interface to reboot, poweroff and logout.
* Added pamac-tray to wayfire startup so pamac-manager can detect packages that need to upgrade properly
* Enabled scale (Super + s or Super + shift + s) and workspace-names plugins.
* Added updated mesa-arm-git package.
* Dropped libva-mesa-driver (now included with mesa-arm-git).
* Added binding (Super + d) for wdisplays (wdisplays may have rendering bugs on panfrost).
* Styled the wofi launcher enabling app icons, 2 columns and more padding from icon to app title.
* Styled mako desktop notifications to better match the desktop theme.
* Upgraded pamac to latest version which fixes a polkit bug.

Date - 31/12/2020
* Added support for HC4
* Includes kernel 5.10.2 with chewitt panfrost patches and tobetter patches.
* Updated wayfire to 0.6.0
* Switched from mali drivers to mesa+panfrost.
* Swapped lxterminal with xfce4-terminal when pressingCTRL + ALT + t .
* Swapped connman to NetworkManager.
* Swapped greetd with gdm.
* Fixed applications not launching from menu because of missing dbus-session.
* Super + a now launches wofi and Super + shift + a bemenu
* Improved initial setup script to not require a system reboot, so the system doesn't reboots anymore after reaching login manager.
* Updated pamac package which now includes hooks to fix appstream xml files.
* Default /boot/boot.ini now has the bootlabel set to "ArchLinux Wayfire" by the image generator.
* Use uuid on /boot/boot.ini and /etc/fstab instead of devices names to prevent possible boot issues.
* Enabled archlinuxdroid repository.
* Latest software updates.

Date - 03/06/2020
* First release

Download Link

Latest Odroid C4 and HC4 image:
https://mega.nz/file/CRll2KjB#0tSyAjs-2 ... LDPKxIyvEY

Pre-built PKGBUILDs repository
http://archlinuxdroid.tk/

PKGBUILD sources
https://github.com/jgmdev/archlinux-odroid

[mad_ady]

I was looking forward to this, thanks!

[campbell]

FYI I tried out this image, and in order to get ethernet working I had to do a pacman -Syu via a wifi dongle. Not sure what the issue was there.

The cpu governor seems to be faulty - there is no measureable difference in power draw even after removing the "performance" and "1 GHz" sections of the cpupower service, nor even after setting scaling_max_freq to 100000 in sysfs. The power savings due to switching from performance to ondemand should be on the order of 86 milliwatts based on what we see in the default Ubuntu image.

[jgmdev]

FYI I tried out this image, and in order to get ethernet working I had to do a pacman -Syu via a wifi dongle. Not sure what the issue was there.

Strange, I tested it and the ethernet was listed on the connman graphical utility (cmst) on first start. Maybe a reboot was needed to properly initialize after running an image with another kernel version?

The cpu governor seems to be faulty - there is no measureable difference in power draw even after removing the "performance" and "1 GHz" sections of the cpupower service, nor even after setting scaling_max_freq to 100000 in sysfs.

Besides removing the performance option on /etc/default/cpupower did you set the governor to ondemand in that same file? Because the default kernel governor is performance so just removing it wouldn't do the trick. In any case you can test with sudo cpupower frequency-set -g ondemand also you can see more usage details of that cpupower command with cpupower help frequency-set From my tests, setting governor to ondemand lowers the cpu clock speed which should also lower power consumption, but something else may be needed on the kernel...

If you did set the governor to ondemand then I'm not sure what extra option needs to be added to the kernel... Personally I haven't done any power measurements (my kill-a-watt device display died ). On this image I did set governor to performance to get a more responsive system, but setting it to ondemand should lower the cpu frequency. If that doesn't works then I'm not sure what other stuff @tobetter is shipping/enabling on his ubuntu image. Also I'm not sure if mainline kernel (which is shipped on this image) has the same good power support than the 4.9 kernel branch maintained by hardkernel/amlogic.

The power savings due to switching from performance to ondemand should be on the order of 86 milliwatts based on what we see in the default Ubuntu image.

In my tests the C4 was getting as hot on the ubuntu image (kernel 4.9) as on this image which has kernel 5.7 But to be honest I didn't measured with a thermometer, all I remember was temperatures reaching around 50C using the readings exposed by the kernel on kernel 4.9 and 5.7.

[campbell]

The cpu governor seems to be faulty - there is no measureable difference in power draw even after removing the "performance" and "1 GHz" sections of the cpupower service, nor even after setting scaling_max_freq to 100000 in sysfs.

Besides removing the performance option on /etc/default/cpupower did you set the governor to ondemand in that same file?

That worked, thanks! The power savings difference between performance and ondemand is roughly as expected.

In my tests the C4 was getting as hot on the ubuntu image (kernel 4.9) as on this image which has kernel 5.7 But to be honest I didn't measured with a thermometer, all I remember was temperatures reaching around 50C using the readings exposed by the kernel on kernel 4.9 and 5.7.

That sounds quite high - I'm seeing mine around 32 C in your image right now, and 28-30 C in the Ubuntu 4.9 kernel last night. I'm running headless though.

[campbell]

One other interesting difference between the Hardkernel 4.9 kernel and this image is that USB3 doesn't appear to be functional, by default, and there is a corresponding massive decrease in the default power draw. Disabling USB entirely in the 4.9 kernel saves a whopping 570 milliwatts, about a third of the total power draw of the board, because USB3 really is that expensive.

[jgmdev]

That sounds quite high - I'm seeing mine around 32 C in your image right now, and 28-30 C in the Ubuntu 4.9 kernel last night. I'm running headless though.

Maybe because Im using the case to protect against dust. Also if running headless you could disable greetd sudo systemctl disable greetd to save some reources.

One other interesting difference between the Hardkernel 4.9 kernel and this image is that USB3 doesn't appear to be functional, by default, and there is a corresponding massive decrease in the default power draw. Disabling USB entirely in the 4.9 kernel saves a whopping 570 milliwatts, about a third of the total power draw of the board, because USB3 really is that expensive.

That is some interesting information... I guess mainline kernel doesnt supports usb 3.0 yet on this board. My next test will be using latest panfrost that enables more open gl es and desktop open gl 2.0 stuff and see how it performs in comparison to mali closed source drivers. I wish panfrost already worked on the odroid n2 too.

[EkriirkE]

When upgrading the system, the latest kernel 5.8 breaks with the default boot.ini provided here. The new Image at {loadaddr} 0x1080000 is much larger and extends to 0x33F3200 which overlaps {initrd_loadaddr} 0x3080000, so initrd_loadaddr needs to be bumped up a bit. I used 0x4080000 to work

[jgmdev]

Refreshed the image and switched from mali blobs into panfrost which runs more stable on wlroots. Actually, wlroots runs much better on the C4/HC4 than gnome+mutter which causes a lot of screen artifacts on the G31 GPU, with wlroots there are no major screen glitches.

Changes

Date -31/12/2020
* Added HC4 support.
* Includes kernel 5.10.2 with chewitt panfrost patches and tobetter patches.
* Updated wayfire to 0.6.0
* Switched from mali drivers to mesa+panfrost.
* Swapped lxterminal with xfce4-terminal when pressingCTRL + ALT + t .
* Swapped connman with NetworkManager.
* Swapped greetd with gdm.
* Fixed applications not launching from menu because of missing dbus-session.
* Super + a now launches wofi and Super + shift + a bemenu
* Improved initial setup script to not require a system reboot, so the system doesn't reboots anymore after reaching login manager.
* Updated pamac package which now includes hooks to fix appstream xml files.
* Default /boot/boot.ini now has the bootlabel set to "ArchLinux Wayfire" by the image generator.
* Use uuid on /boot/boot.ini and /etc/fstab instead of devices names to prevent possible boot issues.
* Enabled archlinuxdroid repository.
* Latest software updates.

Kodi Build
The archlinuxdroid repository now has a build of kodi for: X11, Wayland, and GBM, all of them work with panfrost. To install just issue a sudo pacman -S kodi or use the included graphical package manager. Note: Under wayfire the kodi-wayland package is the one that will properly work.

GLMark
To test the panfrost rendering performance one can install glmark2-git from repo and launch glmark2-es2-wayland.

VLC
The vlc video player works but you will have to change the video output to "OpenGL for Embedded Systems" as shown on the screenshot below:


Known Issues

1. Since panfrost for bifrost is still under heavy development some rendering bugs are expected.

2. gnome-control-center doesn't fully works under wayfire, seems like some background service needs to be running, to configure the wifi run nmtui-connect on a terminal (CTRL + ALT + t) and for bluetooth use blueman.

Download Link on first post!

[jgmdev]

Refreshed the image with the following:

Changes
* Increased xfce4 dropdown terminal width to centralize better on the screen.
* Added wl-color-picker (use Super + shift + p to launch color picker)
* Replaced wayland-logout with wlogout for the app menu logout button which offers an interface to reboot, poweroff and logout.
* Added pamac-tray to wayfire startup so pamac-manager can detect packages that need to upgrade properly
* Enabled scale (Super + s or Super + shift + s) and workspace-names plugins.
* Added updated mesa-arm-git package.
* Dropped libva-mesa-driver (now included with mesa-arm-git).
* Added binding (Super + d) for wdisplays (wdisplays may have rendering bugs on panfrost).
* Styled the wofi launcher enabling app icons, 2 columns and more padding from icon to app title.
* Styled mako desktop notifications to better match the desktop theme.
* Upgraded pamac to latest version which fixes a polkit bug.

The improved configurations are hosted here and can be applied to existing installations manually. Package upgrades can be performed normally with yay, pacman or pamac.

Download on first post.

[squidd]

dude, you should get a Pinebook Pro. These pre-built images would be popular I think. I am testing Wayfire out on the pbp. It's pretty awesome. Is gnome actually installed in this image? I'd like to get away with using gdm to login without having the actual DE installed.

[jgmdev]

dude, you should get a Pinebook Pro. These pre-built images would be popular I think. I am testing Wayfire out on the pbp. It's pretty awesome.

Some time ago I was considering one for the low power consumption. Not sure how they perform but I wouldn't get now a device with less performance than the Odroid N2, it is like the gold standard in performance for now.

Is gnome actually installed in this image? I'd like to get away with using gdm to login without having the actual DE installed.

One of the applications that is shipped on the image depends on gnome-shell been installed not remember if GDM it self or gnome-control-center. Recently I found out that lightdm works for wayland sessions too so you can swap gdm with lightdm and the lightdm gtk greeter or just disable the display manager and launch wayfire when needed from console by typing wayfire and enter.

[squidd]

The install was actually lighter than I originally expected with actual gnome installed. I am going to get lightdm a shot now. Gdm was just suggested other places online. Actually, Manjaro's Wayfire image uses sddm, so that is also possible. There will be a bit of config to do since you won't have the settings tool in Plasma.

And yes, I love the N2 now, a lot more. Especially after seeing how well it's been running as my headless server. I am thinking about getting the HC4 and using my N2 for something more interactive than sitting on a shelf as a fileserver.

I'd really love to be able to get your Wayfire config on my PBP, though. Would the best way to do that be download your wayfire image, look at the packages in the config, and then copy your dot files?

[jgmdev]

And yes, I love the N2 now, a lot more. Especially after seeing how well it's been running as my headless server. I am thinking about getting the HC4 and using my N2 for something more interactive than sitting on a shelf as a fileserver.

Yeah, the N2 performance is a waste if only using it as a file server, the HC4 is more suitable for that but still packs a punch when compared to other boards like the raspi

I'd really love to be able to get your Wayfire config on my PBP, though. Would the best way to do that be download your wayfire image, look at the packages in the config, and then copy your dot files?

Every config file that I use to put up the images is here https://github.com/jgmdev/alarm-image-generator the env directory should give you the details.

[mad_ady]

The Pinebook Pro is built around the RK3399, the same soc in the Odroid N1. Though less powerfull than the N2, it should have excellent mainline/wayland/x11 support.