Matchbox-desktop is a lightweight windows manager for embedded systems. It works great on a Raspberry Pi with one of the smaller TFTs attached. E.g. PiScreen, PiTFT , etc…
Matchbox-desktop is “finger friendly” and makes it easy to navigate while just using your fingers on the touchscreen.
Mathcbox-Desktop needs to be installed from source and via apt-get to get it going correctly, in this order;
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get update
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get install autoconf autogen intltool libtool libx11-dev libxext-dev libxft-dev libpng-dev libgconf2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev -y
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ git clone http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/libmatchbox/
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ git clone http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/matchbox-common/
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ git clone git://git.yoctoproject.org/matchbox-desktop
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cd libmatchbox
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ./autogen.sh
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ make
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo make install
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cd ../matchbox-common
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ./autogen.sh
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ make
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo make install
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cd ../matchbox-desktop
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ./autogen.sh
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ make
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo make install
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get install matchbox-desktop
To start matchbox-desktop
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1 xinit /usr/local/bin/matchbox-desktop
UPDATE: Matchbox-desktop doesn't work with newer Raspbian images. The last confirmed image it works on is 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img
To get matchbox-desktop working;
1. Burn the above img.
2. Follow the instructions above and matchbox-desktop will compile correctly.
3.Perform updates
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get update
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo rpi-update
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get upgrade
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-mods
4. Remove SPI from black-list
Open raspi-blacklist.conf
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf
And place a hash '#' in front of 'blacklist spi-bcm2708'.
5.Configure drivers for any attached TFT.
6. Disable framebuffer driver option for /dev/fb0.
Open up the framebuffer conf file;
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf
Comment out the line of text below;
Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb0"
This can be done by adding a hash (#) at the beginning of line.
#Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb0"
7. Now startmatchbox-desktop.
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1 xinit /usr/local/bin/matchbox-desktop
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