Updated e16 Light-Weight Desktop Alternative for CentOS Altarch 7.5.1804 on i386

[Len E.]

(This post in this category updates the e16 desktop alternative described in
the post Remastering CentOS Altarch 7(1611) on i386 for LXDE and/or
e16 desktops of 2017/03/18).

With CentOS Altarch 7.5.1804 on i386, no .iso with an installed GUI, either
Gnome or KDE, is offered. Therefore, there may be some interest in an
Updated e16 Light-Weight Desktop, which can be added reasonably simply
to the Minimal installation.

Recommended Resources and Capabilities

i) Because some use of the normal 2-step (rpm -ivh, rpmbuild -bb) process
to create binary rpm’s from source rpm’s is required, a current platform
with Development Tools and a GUI installed is useful. I generated one
from a CentOS Altarch 7.4.1708-Gnome distro by running
sudo yum upgrade on it to bring the packages up to the 7.5.1804 level.

ii) Familiarity with the yum grouplist, yum grouplist hidden ids, and
yum groupinfo (group name) commands to identify which groups
are usefully installed with the yum group install (group name) command.

iii) Attached is a listing of page 1 of the standard kickstart file that was used in
generating CentOS Altarch 7.3.1611-Gnome on i386.
(Centos-7-live-gnome-i386-page1.txt).
The base and core groups are pre-installed in the Minimal distro.
-fonts and x11 (a.k.a. “X Window System”) should be installed
immediately on the Minimal distro before adding the e16 Desktop.
Other groups shown in the listing may be of interest.

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The packages used for the Desktop are identified in the attached list file,
CentOS7e16hybrid.txt. Where source rpm’s are shown, the 2-step process
was used to create the binary rpm. There were a surprising number of
difficulties with the 2-step process (circular dependency situation with
libfm, menu-cache, and pcmanfm; syntax error in leafpad.spec file) such
that a relatively large number of fc25.i686.rpm files had to be used.
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Graphics Display Manager

The Slim display manager binary rpm's were created successfully using the
2-step process from the CentOS7 EPEL source rpm, but the graphics did
not work after install. There was an article on the web which mentioned
that there have been problems with Slim on CentOS7.

There were more problems with the 2-step process when trying to use
lightdm.

The solution was simply to install the available Gnome Display Manager,
gdm.

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Transfer of rpm’s from Development Platform to target system

The transfer was accomplished via a USB flash drive. When it
was plugged in on the Minimal System, text information automatically
appeared, showing that the USB device was /dev/sdb1

From the command line, sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt mounted the USB,
although an error message appeared. The files were accessed from
directory /mnt.
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Steps to activate graphics

After the desktop binary rpm’s were locally installed, from the
command line, enter sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target,
then sudo reboot.

After reboot and login, an empty screen appears; right-click the mouse,
choose the maintenance menu option --> regenerate menus. The
normal applications menu should then appear after left-clicking the mouse.
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Menu updates after package installations

It hasn’t been previously mentioned that e16 does not automatically update
the normal applications menu after package installations. The
maintenance menu option --> regenerate menus is required.

Len E.