Similar as to how RetroPie works, can I use a Linux app as my desktop environment? I don't actually need things like an actual desktop and installing apps. I just need to have a clean simple way to run my application and MongoDB on a RaspberryPi.
Quick answer: "YES, but..."
X VS Desktop Environments
You will need a graphical server, but you can avoid using a Desktop Environment!
In Linux, your graphical programs relies (at least) on an X server to work properly. This means you'll never find (if not specifically crafted as a programming exercise) totally independent applications with custom internal libraries and a bult-in environment.
That exactly why X were invented!
But X is NOT your Desktop Environment... in fact, DE runs over X.
Yet, you can go very minimal with some applications using X without any DE.
Let's going minimalistic:
I assume you maybe want a fully functional web browser.
Let's take a common example, Firefox:
Firefox requires X server.
You'll need to manually install X server first, then Firefox.
Either way, if you can rely on a package manager, it should install the bare minimum of the packages, including the X server.
Then, you just need to run the X server without the desktop environnment. Basically something like:
$ X
Then you just start Firefox in this X server:
$ DISPLAY=:0 firefox
You can switch from the X server and the framebuffer by using CTRL+ALT+F1 and CTRL+ALT+F7.
So, in some way, you could also use all seven framebuffers (from F1 to F7) to handle up to 7 graphical programs in 7 different X server processes.
Please notice that this is not the way many applications are intended to run... you'll have to dig down and investigate your application as it may not work as intended sometimes without a proper DE below it
So this is my problem :
I have a macbook pro. I have installed linux on a separate partition (Ubuntu 12.04) and everything was working fine (touchpad, keyboard, etc) and it was perfect. One day, I decided to download a program called wine for gaming purposes. After I did that and rebooted, the mouse (or touchpad) wouldn't work anymore (NOTE: The touchpad is working fine when I boot into mac osx but it does not work when I boot into ubuntu). Now I don't know if the direct cause for it not to work is me downloading wine or if its for any other reason, my question is:
How can I solve this problem?
How do I completely remove wine from my system with all of the files that come with it ? (If that even is the problem)
Is there some kind of configuration file for the touchpad found in the ubuntu system ? If so how do i access it and check it and alter it to work again or something. I just need any solution to this problem I really need the touchpad to work again. NOTE: Connecting an external mouse while booted in ubuntu MAKES THE MOUSE WORK but I don't want that I want the touchpad of the macbook pro to work.
Another side note : the program i use to dual boot is rEEfit.(I can access EFI shell from there .. Is that useful at all ?)
Thanks in advance ..
Wine is a software which helps to run windows applications under linux OS. It has nothing to do with your macbook touchpad drivers. Did you install any drivers or enable any PPAs? did you do a system upgrade just before it worked?
The touchpad on Macbook has always been less than perfect under Ubuntu but have a look at this answer here and the guides here. If you still cannot get it working it might be better if you post the question on Ask Ubuntu.
Can you run Xcode in Linux? Mac OS X was based on BSD Unix, so is it possible?
From what I have heard, there is a MonoDevelop plugin that has an iPhone simulator.
The low-level toolchain for Xcode (the gcc compiler family, the gdb debugger, etc.) is all open source and common to Unix and Linux platforms. But the IDE--the editor, project management, indexing, navigation, build system, graphical debugger, visual data modeling, SCM system, refactoring, project snapshots, etc.--is a Mac OS X Cocoa application, and is not portable.
Nobody suggested Vagrant yet, so here it is, Vagrant box for OSX
vagrant init AndrewDryga/vagrant-box-osx --box-version 0.2.1
vagrant up
# editor's notes:
# - this requires virtualbox
# - version 0.3.1 (2016) is down now, so version 0.2.1 (2015)
# - there are notes for building an image one's self at the site
and you have a MACOS virtual machine. But according to Apple's EULA, you still need to run it on MacOS hardware :D But anywhere, here's one to all of you geeks who wiped MacOS and installed Ubuntu :D
Unfortunately, you can't run the editors from inside using SSH X-forwarding option.
I really wanted to comment, not answer. But just to be precise, OSX is not based on BSD, it is an evolution of NeXTStep. The NeXTStep OS utilizes the Mach kernel developed by CMU. It was originally designed as a MicroKernel, but due to performance constraints, they eventually decided they needed to include the Unix portion of the API into the kernel itself and so a BSD-compatible "server" (originally intended to process requests for BSD-compatible kernel messages) was moved into the kernel, making it a Monolithic kernel. It may be BSD compatible in the programming API, but it is NOT BSD.
The rest of the OS involved ObjectiveC (under arrangements between Stepstone and Richard Stallman of GNU/GCC) with a GUI based on a technology called "Display Postscript" ... sort of like an X Server, but with postscript commands. OS X changed Display Postscript to Display PDF, and increased the general hardware requirements 1000 fold (NeXT could run in 8-16MB, now you need GB).
Due to the close marriage of GCC and Objective C and NeXT, your best bet at running XCode natively under Linux would be to do a port (if you can get ahold of the source - good luck) utilizing the GNUStep libraries. Originally designed for NextStep and then OpenStep compatibility, I've heard they are now more-or-less Cocoa compatible, but I've not played with any of it in almost 2 decades. Of course that only gets you as far as ObjC, not Swift, and I don't know if Apple is going to OpenSource it.
You can run Xcode on Linux NATIVELY using Darling:
Darling is a translation layer that lets you run macOS software on Linux
Once installed you can install Xcode via command-line developer tool following this link.
If you run VMware Player or Workstation (or maybe VirtualBox, I'm not sure if it supports Mac OS X, but may), and then Mac OS X Server (Client can't legally be virtualized). Of course, in this case you are running XCode on OS X, but your host machine could be linux.
If you cannot shell out thousands of dollars for a decent Mac then there is an option to run OSX and XCode in the cloud:
http://www.macincloud.com/
I think you need MonoTouch (not free!) for that plugin.
And no, there is no way to run Xcode on Linux.
Sorry for all the bad news. :)
Nope, you've heard of MonoTouch which is a .NET/mono environment for iPhone development. But you still need a Mac and the official iPhone SDK. And the emulator is the official apple one, this acts as a separate IDE and allows you to not have to code in Objective C, rather you code in c#
It's an interesting project to say the least....
EDIT: apparently, you can distribute on the app store now, early on that was a no go....
The easiest option to do that is running a VM with a OSX copy.
It was weird that no one suggested KVM.
It is gonna provide you almost native performance and it is built-in Linux.
Go and check it out.
you will feel like u are using mac only and then install Xcode there
u may even choose to directly boot into the OSX GUI instead of Linux one on startup
If you really want to use Xcode on linux you could get Virtual Box and install Hackintosh on a VM.
Edit: Virtual Box Guest Additions is not supported with MacOS Movaje. You will want to use VMware
https://www.vmware.com/
https://hackintosh.com/
If you want XCode on another OS, I suggest cloud computing. That way your app is being developed on a Mac and can be submitted to the App Store.
Use quiling framework
For more info check at https://github.com/qilingframework/qiling
I think it is the best
Maybe you can use Virtual Machine and Qiling framework.
If you are planning to use a Mac VM on Linux, check out Docker-OSX. It provides a simple approach to use pre-built Mac VMs with Docker.
To know more about the legality of running Apple software on non-Apple hardware, read this article: Is Hackintosh, OSX-KVM, or Docker-OSX legal?
OSX is based on BSD, not Linux. You cannot run Xcode on a Linux machine.
Have 4 DVI output. Seems I hopefully will have driver support on this. Details are sketchy online about supporting 4 outputs, but seems possible.
My question is from the Linux group and Virtualbox pros.... Will the seamless method of VirtualBox allow me to use all 3 of my monitors for multiscreen. I'd like to stick with Ubuntu and run Visual C# and other tools from my VirtualBox. Compiz effects are just too amazing to want Aero Glass.
What do you think, will my system be able to use the multiple monitors with VirtualBox and this graphics card? I've googled for hours and am still searching for answers.
Edit:
I tried virtualbox last night. Pretty slick, though I had an error in installing Visual C#NET. However, it wouldn't let you drag between multiple screens??? Is this something the host must resolve, or does the guest session need to have special settings for multiple monitors? Haven't been able to find anything in google supporting multiple monitors with virtualbox.
You should be able to configure your screens just fine. Don't know the exact details for an ATI setup, but you should be able to use Xinerama to create a single large virtual desktop, and then just run VirtualBox (though honestly, I prefer KVM, which runs on modern CPUs which provide native virtualization support) full-screen on one of those monitors. You would then be able to have three screens dedicated to Ubuntu, and the forth dedicated to Windows.
You might want to look into the non-Xinerama method of multiple displays. Each display is then treated as its own screen (so you'd have :0.0, :0.1, :0.2, and :0.3 for your X displays). You cannot move applications between the screens, but you get four independent desktops. I personally find that more useful than the idea of a single stretched desktop over multiple displays; when I used a laptop as my primary system, that's what I did, and when I get a second monitor for my computer, I'll likely return to that means of doing things. You'll have to investigate the specifics for such a setup with ATI, but the X server supports it, so it's just a matter of looking at your ATI driver's documentation to put the pieces together.
I do this all the time using VNC and it is very easy, but I am curious about a few things like XDMCP. As I understand it, this is a way of creating the entire desktop on a remote X-Server which seems fairly elegant.
Several years ago, I worked on a Solaris server and multiple developers had X-Servers running in Windows and we were able to access a full remote X-desktop. All my efforts so far in X based systems seem to indicate that only one instance, remote or local, of the desktop can be loaded, so I guess this Solaris thing was an actual application that "emulated" a desktop, but who knows....
Any input ?
From Windows I've found the best way to do this is using the Xwin command in cygwin.
Steps:
Install Cygwin, making sure to install X11. (Do this by scrolling to the bottom of the list on the "select packages" screen and click on the word "default" to the right of "X11". Give it a second or two and it will change to "install".)
Then, just run the Xwin command like this:
Xwin -query your.unix.system.name
You'll get a full-screen login window from you unix box. That's it!
Btw, sometimes firewalls get in the way of the UDP protocol for XDMCP. If that happens, look up the port numbers (one UDP outgoing, and one TCP incomming) and unblock them. Other xdmcp troubleshooting tips here.
NX will allow you to use a complete remote desktop environment locally, and most Linux distros already have the server available.
As an alternative to full cygwin install you might want to look at Xming. It is quite a bit lighter and should provide the same functionality.
In Xorg/GDM/LightDM options : "listen" should be activated (disabled by default)
In windows, try Xwin32.
In Linux, try Xnest (windowed) or X with "-query" command.
Be careful: it's slow and everything (passwords included) is transmitted in clear. So keep it on local network, tunnel it in SSH or better don't use it.
I found an additional remote desktop implementation which works quite nicely with LXDE:
x2go
Has clients for Windows, Linux and MacOS X.