Gemini New Debian Experience

[KorpuS]

Hi,

Debian on Planet's Gemini computer is great but in my opinion, a taskbar as well as overlapping windows is not a good thing for such a small screen. In addition, the Gemini has the great advantage of having a real keyboard, it must be used.

So I tried to get closer to the use of a smartphone, with windows that appear on the entire screen without overlapping and that we switch one behind the other without a taskbar but with effective keyboard shortcuts. All with an auto login so you do not waste time on startup.

I realized a procedure to install LightDM and DWM on Planet Gemini computer (tested on wifi only model) for a new user experience, namely:
- auto login as gemini user;
- no task bar;
- by default, windows are managed in monocle mode, they are displayed on totality on the screen same as a mobile device;
- easy control with keyboard;
- Rofi application launcher;
- preconfigured shortkey...

Here you can see the desktop, on top at left, you have 2 workspaces; at right the status bar with lan, battery, audio and time informations:
[img]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yannclement/gnde/master/dwm_desktop.png\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

Here you can see Chromium on workspace 1:
[img]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yannclement/gnde/master/dwm_chrome.png\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

Here it's the terminal Konsole with application launcher Rofi on workspace 2:
[img]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yannclement/gnde/master/dwm_terminal_rofi.png\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

In bonus:
- battery level works;
- wifi works;
- brightness keys works;
- audio volume keys works;
- shortkeys to reboot and shutdown (immediately).

For bad things:
Special functions (volume, brightness and other) with FN key not works but special characters works with no problem.

The whole procedure with the necessary files is at this address:
https://github.com/yannclement/gnde

Hoping that this little job will serve you too.

See you.

[Eric BF]

Debian on Planet's Gemini computer is great but in my opinion, a taskbar as well as overlapping windows is not a good thing for such a small screen. In addition, the Gemini has the great advantage of having a real keyboard, it must be used.

I agree completely.  Thank you for the detailed post.  I've done similar using stumpwm as the window manager.

[KorpuS]

Thank you for your interest. I did not know stumpwm, good info.

[teon]

Really cool! Thank you for sharing! I've done similar setup with: i3+polybar+dmenu.
The only trouble I have so far, is that the keyboard doesn't work propely (ESC key mainly). From what I see you have (in config.h) keyboard configuration in DWM? Am i corretct?

[KorpuS]

Hello,

I also tried i3, but I had too much trouble working a correct status bar.

DWM has all its config in config.h, even for the keyboard.

[frnzndr]

Really cool! Thank you for sharing! I've done similar setup with: i3+polybar+dmenu.
The only trouble I have so far, is that the keyboard doesn't work propely (ESC key mainly). From what I see you have (in config.h) keyboard configuration in DWM? Am i corretct?

Sorry to capture this, but have you had any trouble with displaying fonts in the status bar with i3? I assume polybar is some replacement for i3status - maybe this avoids the problem I had with the fonts not being displayed at all? The best I could do last time I tried was to use the old default fonts and they were very tiny. Possibly KorpuS' problems with i3 were of the same type as mine? Would be very interested in a solution as I've grown accustomed to i3...

[KorpuS]

Hi,

My problem was the batterie level not working with i3status. No problem with font.

[jovpov]

Nice work! I have installed it 10 days ago on debian partition...What is the procedure for upgrades? Also, it would be nice to have shortcuts help easily visible somehow (on desktop or shown on e.g. Fn+?

[TimW]

Hi,

My problem was the batterie level not working with i3status. No problem with font.

You need to set the path to the uevent file in your i3status config:

battery 0 {
...
  path = "/sys/class/power_supply/battery/uevent"
...
}

I typed the above from memory as I don't have my gemini to hand but if I got it wrong, I'm pretty sure that it should be correct enough for you to find the file from the terminal.

I had problems getting CPU usage to work as well and I ended up compiling my own i3status with some fixes for that. The problem is that i3status expects the processors to be list consecutively but the Gemini turns CPUs on and off non-consecutively (e.g. you might only have cpu0 and cpu5 turned on and i3status would look for cpu0 and cpu1).

[KorpuS]

Hi,

My problem was the batterie level not working with i3status. No problem with font.

You need to set the path to the uevent file in your i3status config:

battery 0 {
...
  path = "/sys/class/power_supply/battery/uevent"
...
}

I typed the above from memory as I don't have my gemini to hand but if I got it wrong, I'm pretty sure that it should be correct enough for you to find the file from the terminal.

Hi,

Sorry but it does not work. In fact i3status is waiting for a BAT0 type field instead of battery. A field ending with a battery index. If there is no index, it detects nothing.

[TimW]

Hi,

My problem was the batterie level not working with i3status. No problem with font.

You need to set the path to the uevent file in your i3status config:

battery 0 {
...
  path = "/sys/class/power_supply/battery/uevent"
...
}

I typed the above from memory as I don't have my gemini to hand but if I got it wrong, I'm pretty sure that it should be correct enough for you to find the file from the terminal.

Hi,

Sorry but it does not work. In fact i3status is waiting for a BAT0 type field instead of battery. A field ending with a battery index. If there is no index, it detects nothing.

Hmm. It works for me. BAT0 is the default path and that is why you have to override it in the config. Maybe you need a later version of i3status. I compiled my own from the git repository so I have the most up to date version possible.

[TimW]

Looks like you need a version of i3status which is less than 17 days old! There was a fix checked in then for when POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Not charging - which is exactly what my status shows.

[TimW]

I've attached my i3status which fixes the battery issue and my config. The interesting lines in the config are the path line in the battery section, and the max_cpu line in the cpu_usage section. The max_cpu entry is non-standard and just enables my workaround for the gemini not numbering it's cpus consecutively when they aren't all enabled.
Hopefully someone will find them useful.

[TimW]

I now have a better solution for displaying CPU usage. This version does not require any alterations to the config to work correctly with the Gemini. It also adds a new keyword to the cpu usage format which prints out the number of activated CPUs (%active). The change to the source code is also more contained so I've added the source code so that you can checkout the current version of i3status, add in my changes, and then re-compile for yourself.

[KorpuS]

I now have a better solution for displaying CPU usage. This version does not require any alterations to the config to work correctly with the Gemini. It also adds a new keyword to the cpu usage format which prints out the number of activated CPUs (%active). The change to the source code is also more contained so I've added the source code so that you can checkout the current version of i3status, add in my changes, and then re-compile for yourself.

Thank you for sharing your solution. I did not try because I stay on DWM which suits me very well and is very flexible to adapt to the Gemini.