Desktop Environments

I doubt the pi would run a full gui of Gnome leave alone the full weight of KDE but I have had windowmaker and fluxbox running rather well on a B+ (before a power outage corrupted the sd card). I should explore using different guis (wayland?) and note how to install and set as default, vnc, and as a remote x session on nix and doze. I may also choose some lightweight desktop apps such as mail, browser, office, media and imaging.

Fluxbox on VNC

Assuming vnc server is not yet installed therefore ~/.vnc/* has not been created.

 sudo apt-get install fluxbox tightvncserver;

tightvncserver -geometry 800x600 :1

tightvncserver -kill :1

vi ~/.vnc/xstartup

#/etc/X11/Xsession

fluxbox &

(untested) to select fluxbox as the default gui use the following:-

sudo update-alternatives --config x-session-manager

Adding items to the fluxbox menu

Most items can be found on the menu and this is a good place to add anything else you would like to keep close at hand. The menu you see is dynamically created by the os at
/etc/X11/fluxbox/fluxbox-menu
and then included to the main menu. I prefer to include a second menu of my own then slowly maintain and populate it as I see fit.
so navigate to the fluxbox directory, create a file called confmenu and include it in the menu file.

 cd ~/.fluxbox;ls 
 > confmenu
 vi menu

[include](/home/pi/.fluxbox/confmenu)

vi /home/pi/.fluxbox/confmenu

[submenu](config){}
  [exec] (Bash) {x-terminal-emulator -T "Bash" -e /bin/bash --login} <>
  [exec] (confmenu) {leafpad /home/pi/.fluxbox/confmenu} <>
  [submenu](background){}
    [exec] (graygrad1) {fbsetroot -gradient Vertical -from grey20 -to black} <>
    [exec] (graygrad2) {fbsetroot -gradient Horizontal -from grey10 -to blue} <>
  [end]
[end]

 [ exec ] ( menu entry ) { command } < icon > 

 [ submenu ]( groupname ){ }
 [ end ]

light weight gui apps

• sudo apt-get install claws-mail claws-mail-extra-plugins
• sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser
• sudo apt-get install abiword
• sudo apt-get install gnumeric
• sudo apt-get install xfe
• sudo apt-get install vlc
• sudo apt-get install pinta

Beaver Text Editor

wget http://www.bristolwatch.com/rpi/dl/beaver_0.4.1-1_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i beaver_0.4.1-1_armhf.deb

Adding Fonts
for all users:-
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/share/fonts/
drop your new ttf in to /usr/local/share/fonts
then run fc-cache -fv to update the font repository with your new font.
for a single user create and use ~/.fonts/ instead.

Chrome browser

wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libg/libgcrypt11/libgcrypt11_1.5.0-5+deb7u4_armhf.deb

wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/218525709/chromium-browser_45.0.2454.85-0ubuntu0.14.04.1.1097_armhf.deb

wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/218525711/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_45.0.2454.85-0ubuntu0.14.04.1.1097_armhf.deb

sudo dpkg -i libgcrypt11_1.5.0-5+deb7u4_armhf.deb

sudo dpkg -i chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_45.0.2454.85-0ubuntu0.14.04.1.1097_armhf.deb

sudo dpkg -i chromium-browser_45.0.2454.85-0ubuntu0.14.04.1.1097_armhf.deb

apt-get -f install  # to fix dependancies