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Hildon

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Revision as of 21:22, 26 September 2017 by Ollieparanoid (talk | contribs) (Hildon: Performance problems: update with more links)
Hildon
Hildon running in QEMU
Hildon running in QEMU
Name Hildon
Graphics stack X11
Toolkit GTK+2, WIP: GTK+3
In postmarketOS
Package postmarketos-ui-hildon
Status Available

This is the desktop from Maemo, which is a Debian-based distribution, that originally ran on the N900.
We do not have a postmarketos-ui-hildon yet (but that should be easy to make, look at postmarketos-ui-weston for reference if you're interested, dear reader).

Installation instructions

Add following packages as extra in pmbootstrap init:

mesa,mesa-dri-swrast,hildon-desktop,hildon-theme-alpha

Notice that due to swrast being used (probably) this is way too slow to be usable on N900. Even typing in xfce4-terminal results in one second lag.


To make hildon-desktop find its theme (install hildom-theme-alpha first):

sudo ln -s /usr/share/themes/alpha /usr/share/themes/default

For default wallpapers:

mkdir ~/.backgrounds
cp /usr/share/themes/alpha/backgrounds/wallpaper1.png ~/.backgrounds/background-1.png
cp /usr/share/themes/alpha/backgrounds/wallpaper2.png ~/.backgrounds/background-2.png
cp /usr/share/themes/alpha/backgrounds/wallpaper3.png ~/.backgrounds/background-3.png
cp /usr/share/themes/alpha/backgrounds/wallpaper4.png ~/.backgrounds/background-4.png

You can then verify correct operation by ssh-ing in, as root:

sudo mv /etc/profile.d/start_weston.sh /etc
sudo killall weston
sudo rc-update add dbus default
sudo setup-xorg-base
Xorg &
DISPLAY=:0
export DISPLAY
hildon-desktop

Running

To run hildon-desktop, create a ~/.xinitrc with the following contents:

if which dbus-launch >/dev/null && test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"; then
    eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session`
fi
export LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8
exec hildon-desktop

You will also have to install dbus-x11 in order to get dbus-launch. Depending on the device you have, you may also have to install mesa-dri-swrast.

hildon-desktop can then be started by running startx.

WIP: Possible fix for performance problems

Hildon renders everything on the GPU, which is terribly slow when we have to resort to software rendering. At least on the N900 it looks like a slideshow. The GTK+3 version won't improve this, as it also uses Clutter for rendering. However, we should be able to improve the situation by replacing the OpenGL stuff, that mesa currently handles, with a faster software implementation from TinyGLES and related libraries.

More information:

See also