Switch to xfce?

[jakfish]

Running Manjaro Phosh Beta ver 33 on PP Beta, I'd like to install and switch to an xfce desktop. Would that be a simple pacman install of all things xfce, or would I need to find a non-Phosh OS and start from there?

Thanks.

[Kevin Kofler]

Xfce is not designed for touch screens, I doubt you will be happy with it on the PinePhone.

[Uturn]

Running Manjaro Phosh Beta ver 33 on PP Beta, I'd like to install and switch to an xfce desktop. Would that be a simple pacman install of all things xfce, or would I need to find a non-Phosh OS and start from there?

Thanks.

rather install xcfe on a microSD card and boot from there, I doubt a simple pacman install will work. As far as I know, on PinePhone you don't switch between user interfaces which run on the same base system. Else xcfe is a refreshing approach and it is very customizable for those who know how to.

[jakfish]

Thank you both for your replies. I didn't think it could be as easy as a pacman install. As for xfce usability on the pp, I had already resigned myself to keystroking rather than a lot of touchscreen use. I use the phone/kb as a pda only.

Phosh is fine for me in most regards except for its home screen in landscape and its very basic panel, the latter making me look at xfce and its applets, especially genmon for monitoring uptime and the weather applet.

Right now, I'm using gxmessage to produce certain vitals but would like to see them on the panel instead.

[Kevin Kofler]

rather install xcfe on a microSD card and boot from there, I doubt a simple pacman install will work. As far as I know, on PinePhone you don't switch between user interfaces which run on the same base system.

Well, there is no technical reason why it cannot be done. You just need to, after installing the packages, configure the display manager to auto-login you into the correct session type, or switch the display manager altogether. (Of course, that assumes you know what a display manager is. Reading the Arch wiki can help.)

[jakfish]

Code:

sudo pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies network-manager-applet onboard

Then:

Code:

sudo systemctl disable phosh

Upon reboot, xfce can come up as desktop. Initial rub: it boots to shell, so both user/password are necessary, followed by:

Code:

startxfce4

With handle-jiggling, xfce works (though not as a phone). Most vexing is the once-again failure of top keys (minus, underscore, etc). Workaround so far is a combination of xbindkeys and onboard keyboard, since in xbindkeys, pipe and backtick produce errors (eg: 

Code:

xdotool type|

makes linux thinks there’s a script error).

To produce accurate battery percentage for combined phone+kb, I had to script a genmon applet. But tuptime also works in genmon.

I’ve keystroked all apps/utilities since touchscreen is hard to use for menus, etc, but phone+kb now looks like a laptop hit by a shrink ray and everything pretty much works.