X11 based Desktop

[tobetter]

Let me start one thread more regarding to yet another Ubuntu Desktop images,

Based on the great effort of @crashoverride, I am able to build two more Desktop images - Mate and XFCE - they are based on X11. After flashing them to a storage, one needs to turn off their compositor features for better performance otherwise very laggy. Since I am not able to familiar such desktop, I would not offer a solution if anything happens but we have many who willing to use them instead of Gnome Desktop, I kindly ask you to share bugs and tips here so some bugs from kernel or wrong OS setting can be fixed, or workaround/tips/tweaks can be shared for all.

If you are also interesting to build the image to improve the quaility of image or start your project from such OS images, please ping me to discuss.

Download links:
Ubuntu Mate Desktop (md5sum: e589fcf5a1ab44ed4d26f9b88524a6a4)
Ubuntu XFCE Desktop (md5sum: 48413ef8e06cecabefe63687874c8a48)

MUST TIPS for performance:

Mate Desktop
Run these two command as soon as log into Mate desktop and reboot, the perforamce will be improved.

Code: Select all

gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false
gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager "marco-no-composite"

XFCE Desktop
No idea bout the commands like Mate Desktop, but one can turn off the compositor in Window Manager Tweaks.

Screenshot_2022-04-13_17-44-05.png (315.41 KiB) Viewed 5878 times

[mctom]

This disables display compositing in XFCE:

Code: Select all

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -n -t bool -s false

[brad]

thanks tobetter, i'll have to test my lightweight desktop of choice - lxde

[tobetter]

thanks tobetter, i'll have to test my lightweight desktop of choice - lxde

Ok...another flavor...

[L67GS]

I'm running the Mate image now with VU7A+. There was initially a problem with the menu making odd graphics but the gsettings mods fixed it. Still no touch screen but audio works.

[tobetter]

I'm running the Mate image now with VU7A+. There was initially a problem with the menu making odd graphics but the gsettings mods fixed it. Still no touch screen but audio works.

Didn't the touch driver work with Gnome Desktop?

[L67GS]

I'm running the Mate image now with VU7A+. There was initially a problem with the menu making odd graphics but the gsettings mods fixed it. Still no touch screen but audio works.

Didn't the touch driver work with Gnome Desktop?

It did, but it doesn't appear to work now. This could just be my VU7A+, it gets bounced around a lot so maybe it just broke. Also, the graphics problem is doing something odd now, after reboot it still gets weird with the menu unless there's a window open for something else.

[tobetter]

I'm running the Mate image now with VU7A+. There was initially a problem with the menu making odd graphics but the gsettings mods fixed it. Still no touch screen but audio works.

Didn't the touch driver work with Gnome Desktop?

It did, but it doesn't appear to work now. This could just be my VU7A+, it gets bounced around a lot so maybe it just broke. Also, the graphics problem is doing something odd now, after reboot it still gets weird with the menu unless there's a window open for something else.

Ok, let me see sometime later.
FYI, X11 based OS image is experimental and it would be a lot glitches althought its kernel shares the one for Server/Gnome Desktop.

Thank you for reporting.

[mctom]

I turned off XFCE compositing using a command I derived earlier, and it works okay-ish. Some artifacts (black blocks) appear around the menu sometimes, maybe something similar to what @L67GS referred to.
How can I tell X11 acceleration even works? Because it doesn't feel like it does.

[domih]

.../...
Ubuntu Mate Desktop (md5sum: e589fcf5a1ab44ed4d26f9b88524a6a4)
Ubuntu XFCE Desktop (md5sum: 48413ef8e06cecabefe63687874c8a48)
.../...
Mate Desktop
Run these two command as soon as log into Mate desktop and reboot, the perforamce will be improved.

Code: Select all

gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false
gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager "marco-no-composite"

.../...

How did I end up here?
Playing the role of the innocent lamb going to the sacrificial slaughterhouse, I used the eMMC from Ameridroid running the Gnome desktop. No problem there. However IMHO, Gnome is to Desktop environments what "molecular cuisine" is to restaurants. The latter is a pretext to serve tiny portions of food in the plates, the former is a pretext to deliver a small set of features in the name of revolutionary new approach to Desktop GUI. In both cases, I considered it BS.

So let's go Mate, right mate?

Code: Select all

sudo apt install mate-desktop-environment
sudo apt install mate-desktop-environment-extras

Log out, chose mate and... not much: as expected.

So I went to viewtopic.php?p=347686#p347686

Kudos to @crashoverride, @tobetter and the other members who walk the path.

I downloaded ubuntu-20.04-mate-desktop-odroidm1-20220413.img.xz and flashed it to the eMMC.

I got the predicted artifacts and "echoes" of windows contents all over the place.

I applied the magical keywords:

Code: Select all

gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false
gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager "marco-no-composite"

and rebooted.

I'm not an expert like you guys so I'm just reporting what I see and I switched my lamb hat to that of the harbinger of bad news otherwise known as black-box tester.

First of all, I'm using a 3840x2160 monitor.

Issue #1
The login screen gets "duplicated/echoed". See image below. Easy to reproduced in 1920x1080, and probably other resolutions.

001.jpg (391.11 KiB) Viewed 5620 times

Issue #2
The windows' contents get "duplicated/echoed". See image below. Easy to reproduced. Sorry, the image is upside down, but you get the picture.

This issue seems less potent in 2560x1440 and gone (?) in 1920x1080.

002.jpg (430.19 KiB) Viewed 5620 times

Issue #3
*** Never mind on that one. It's the way it behaves ***


Issue #4
In 1920x1080 or 2560x1440 mode, the green highlight of the menu items can be fantasy. See image below. Not easy to reproduced.

004.jpg (377.34 KiB) Viewed 5620 times

Issue #5
When the desktop appears (after logging in) you expect the pointer to appear centered in the middle of the screen. However, in 1920x1080, it shows up "constrained" to the bottom right-hand corner. So I suspect the initial position of the pointer is still computed with the 3840x2160 resolution in mind.

Other suspicion: are there other GUI components whose position is still computed with the 3840x2160 resolution in mind despite the latter been set to 1920x1080 or 2560x1440?

[domih]

Issue #6
- Let's the desktop idle until the screen saver triggers.
- Press space bar or click to trigger the logging in back dialog box.
- Enter the right password (here "odroid")
--> The password is rejected no matter what. Easily reproducible.

[dalekrebs]

I have several issues with this X11 based release...(Ubuntu_XFCE dated 20220414)
Same display problems as already indicated by domih with Mate version
ALSO, I have the 8GB version of the M1 and it only shows 4GB of memory total.

This release was unusable with it's display and memory issues.

Thanks for the hard work on 3rd party alternative.

[hilton8r]

I didn't see this thread before. I'll add the following:

X11 should allow us to calibrate our touch screen with our current driver. Calibration is currently an issue with wayland, but I haven't spent much time on a solution for that yet.

Our primary concern is the inability to rotate the screen to portrait. Maybe a solution similar to using the fbdev driver like we did on the xu4 is possible. We will look into css rotation tags in the application as well. I'm plugging away on the gdm / wayland approach for now, but I'm stuck on how to install and configure accelerated chromium. I'll be able to spend more time on that after I get everything all of my scripts coded and working.

Thanks all.

[warbot]

Hi,

Any one knows why repositories are down?

Connection failed [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/rk35 ... _arm64.deb Connection failed [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]


Regards,

[tobetter]

Hi,

Any one knows why repositories are down?

Connection failed [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/rk35 ... _arm64.deb Connection failed [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]


Regards,

the server is alive.

[warbot]

Hi,

Im still getting errors when upgrading..

Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Err:1 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/rk3568 arm64 linux-image-4.19.219-odroid-arm64 arm64 4.19.219-202212130829~focal
Connection failed [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
Get:2 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/main arm64 linux-libc-dev arm64 6.0.16-202301021720~focal [1165 kB]
Fetched 1165 kB in 1min 6s (17.8 kB/s)
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/rk35 ... _arm64.deb Connection failed [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?


Any idea of what could be happening?


Thanks,

[mad_ady]

Can you check that you have a default route (ip route get)?

[warbot]

Hi,

Its been now some weeks and Im still unable to upgrade a batch of M1.

Err:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports focal-updates/main arm64 ubuntu-advantage-tools arm64 27.13.6~20.04.1
403 Forbidden [IP: 185.125.190.39 80]
Err:2 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports focal-updates/main arm64 fwupd-signed arm64 1.51~20.04.1+1.2-3ubuntu0.2
403 Forbidden [IP: 185.125.190.39 80]
Err:3 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/main arm64 odroid-alsa arm64 5:22.04+202303071715~focal
403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
Err:4 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/main arm64 odroid-base arm64 5:22.04+202303071715~focal
403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
Err:5 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/rk3568 arm64 linux-image-4.19.219-odroid-arm64 arm64 4.19.219-202303141338~focal
403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
Err:6 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/main arm64 linux-libc-dev arm64 6.1.13-202302241510~focal
403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/po ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 185.125.190.39 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/main ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/main ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/po ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 185.125.190.39 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/rk35 ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/main ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?


ping 106.250.177.235
PING 106.250.177.235 (106.250.177.235) 56(84) bytes of data.


ping www.google.com
PING www.google.com (172.217.30.196) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from bog02s08-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.30.196): icmp_seq=1 ttl=115 time=8.09 ms
64 bytes from bog02s08-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.30.196): icmp_seq=2 ttl=115 time=7.87 ms
64 bytes from bog02s08-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.30.196): icmp_seq=3 ttl=115 time=7.92 ms
64 bytes from bog02s08-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.30.196): icmp_seq=4 ttl=115 time=7.96 ms


Any help will be appreciate it.


Cheers,

[tobetter]

Hi,

Its been now some weeks and Im still unable to upgrade a batch of M1.

Err:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports focal-updates/main arm64 ubuntu-advantage-tools arm64 27.13.6~20.04.1
403 Forbidden [IP: 185.125.190.39 80]
Err:2 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports focal-updates/main arm64 fwupd-signed arm64 1.51~20.04.1+1.2-3ubuntu0.2
403 Forbidden [IP: 185.125.190.39 80]
Err:3 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/main arm64 odroid-alsa arm64 5:22.04+202303071715~focal
403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
Err:4 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/main arm64 odroid-base arm64 5:22.04+202303071715~focal
403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
Err:5 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/rk3568 arm64 linux-image-4.19.219-odroid-arm64 arm64 4.19.219-202303141338~focal
403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
Err:6 http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr focal/main arm64 linux-libc-dev arm64 6.1.13-202302241510~focal
403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/po ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 185.125.190.39 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/main ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/main ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/po ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 185.125.190.39 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/rk35 ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr/pool/main ... _arm64.deb 403 Forbidden [IP: 106.250.177.235 80]
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?


ping 106.250.177.235
PING 106.250.177.235 (106.250.177.235) 56(84) bytes of data.


ping www.google.com
PING www.google.com (172.217.30.196) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from bog02s08-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.30.196): icmp_seq=1 ttl=115 time=8.09 ms
64 bytes from bog02s08-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.30.196): icmp_seq=2 ttl=115 time=7.87 ms
64 bytes from bog02s08-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.30.196): icmp_seq=3 ttl=115 time=7.92 ms
64 bytes from bog02s08-in-f4.1e100.net (172.217.30.196): icmp_seq=4 ttl=115 time=7.96 ms


Any help will be appreciate it.


Cheers,

I guess it's a network issue, since the servers ppa.linuxfactory.or.kr and ports.ubuntu.com are accessible.
Can you try to open them in your browser?
Or update server is temporary inaccessible?

[warbot]

Hi,

The location the boards are seem to have any firewall block. In my office the URL from ubuntu loads just fine.


Thanks in advance.