Configuring a Raspberry Pi 4 as a desktop replacement

Published 06 June 2020 · 4min

I gave in to getting a Raspberry Pi 4 last month, and I’ve tried using it as a desktop replacement over the past week or so. It hasn’t been going so badly! After some initial issues finding a working SD card, I found the one I’d originally gotten for my Switch and put Raspbian on it. I went with the Lite version as I planned on keeping what I installed on it to a minimum.

[Keep in mind that all of this is a highly compressed version of what I did, and I’m probably leaving out some stuff. However, if I need to rebuild the machine at some point, this should be enough to get me 99% of the way.]

After boot, I ran raspi-config to get the basics working and performed an upgrade on the OS to get it up to date:

# apt update
# apt dist-upgrade
# reboot

Then I got everything installed:

# apt install --no-install-recommends xorg lightdm xdg-utils compton
# apt install --no-install-recommends fish font-inconsolata sqlite3 vim git zip
# apt install debfoster xsel i3 firefox-esr tmux feh fonts-noto fonts-dejavu
# apt install --no-install-recommends python3-venv python3-pip pipx
# apt install xfonts-terminus xfonts-terminus-oblique
# apt install --no-install-recommends keepassxc atril
# apt install avahi-utils cifs-utils smbclient
# apt install --no-install-recommends neomutt ssmtp w3m
# apt install --no-install-recommends ansible
# apt install --no-install-recommends rsync mkdocs
# apt install --no-install-recommends pelican python3-typogrify python3-html5lib

I generated some SSH keys:

$ ssh-keygen -t ed25519

I got that key copied into Github, checked out my dotfiles repo, and installed everything:

$ git clone git@github.com:kgaughan/dotfiles.git .dotfiles
$ make -C .dotfiles reinstall

I needed to fiddle with ~/.Xdefaults a bit to get it working as I wanted.

Here’s my ~/.xsession script:

#!/bin/sh

command -v mpd >/dev/null && export MPD_HOST=$HOME/.cache/mpd.sock
test -e ~/.fehbg && ~/.fehbg

exec /usr/bin/x-window-manager

I downloaded a wallpaper and configured it with feh:

$ feh --bg-center ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/rainbow-smoke-high-definition_0.jpg

It was at this point that I realised I was still using the default pi user, and I didn’t want that, so I created a new user:

# adduser --add_extra_groups keith
# adduser keith sudo
# adduser keith adm
# adduser keith input
# adduser keith games
# adduser keith netdev
# adduser keith gpio
# adduser keith i2c
# adduser keith spi

I also want to be able to SSH into this machine:

# systemctl enable --now ssh

Here is the output of localectl:

$ localectl 
   System Locale: LANG=en_IE.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: ie
      X11 Layout: ie
       X11 Model: pc105
     X11 Variant: UnicodeExpert
     X11 Options: lv3:ralt_switch

I needed to do some additioanl fiddling around in raspi-config for that.

In /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, I updated greeter-hide-users to false to avoid needing to type in my username.

I investigated the GNOME Epiphany browser as an alternative to Firefox, but I wasn’t too impressed with it. I did mean I installed compton however. Here’s my ~/.config/compton.conf file:

shadow = true;
no-dnd-shadow = true;
no-dock-shadow = true;
# If this is true, it causes some weird outlining
clear-shadow = false;

shadow-ignore-shaped = true;
glx-no-stencil = true;

shadow-opacity = 0.25;
shadow-radius = 5;
shadow-offset-x = -7;
shadow-offset-y = -7;

backend = "glx";

My ~/.config/i3/config file is similar to what I set up on the Dell Mini 12 when I tried getting it working again. I added/modified:

exec --no-startup-id compton -b
set $mod Mod4
font pango:DejaVu Sans 8
bindsym $mod+Return exec exec i3-sensible-terminal

The ‘double exec’ is so that the shell process i3 spins up when launching the terminal doesn’t stick around.

Once I was happy with everything, I obliterated the pi user:

# deluser --remove-all-files pi

As I want to mount the SMB share from my NAS, I added this to /etc/fstab:

//192.168.1.160/nas /media/keith cifs username=keith,credentials=/home/keith/.smbcred,uid=1001,gid=1001 0 0

I created ~/.smbcred with the permissions 600 to store the password:

password=500p3r53kr3t

And got it mounted:

# mkdir -p /media/keith
# chown keith:keith /media/keith
# mount -a

Opinion

It’s been going surprisingly well! Aside from the occasional freeze, which is likely due to the SD card. I didn’t have to get any extra equipment for it as I already had a mouse, keyboard, and mini-HDMI cable ready to use with it.

It’s been nice having a relatively distraction free environment to work from.

One minor annoyance is that Raspbian is still 32-bit, while the SOC is 64-bit. I doesn’t matter so much because mine is the 4GB model, but it’s unfortunate as it caused me some confusion when attempting so set up gdrive to I could pull down files from my Google Drive account.