RetroPie Window Manager, Display Manager

Nickelino

Hi Community,

for the last weeks I was bulding a x86-RetroPie-Machine with a Zbox Nano CI320 with Ubuntu Desktop 16.04.
Everything works well so far, but there is one thing that's missing:

Nowadays I have to start EmulationStation wihtin a desktop environment (in my case Unity)

I want the machine to act like the System on the Raspberry-Image.
It seems to be that EmulationStation starts as a standalone application and if another application is getting started, EmulationStation goes down and the application pops up.
EmulationStation stays down until the started application is getting closed.
If an application starts or end you only see the terminal.

How did they get it working on the Raspberry-Image?
Wich packages or daemons do I have to install?

It would be really nice to get RetroPie working on x86 without the usual desktop environments.

Greetings

Nicke

meleu

@Nickelino said in RetroPie Window Manager, Display Manager:

It would be really nice to get RetroPie working on x86 without the usual desktop environments.

This sentence makes me believe that you would like to "use RetroPie on Linux/x86 platform with no X Window System". But this other sentence confused me (it looks like a X environment behavior):

(...) EmulationStation starts as a standalone application and if another application is getting started, EmulationStation goes down and the application pops up.

Anyway, I think it's not possible (currently?) to install RetroPie in a x86 processor with no X environment.

Nickelino

@meleu

IIt's really hard for me to describe it but you can see how it works on the Raspberry-Image.

I think there must be running some kind of a X-server because it is a requirement for EmulationStation.
In the Linux world there are a lot of window and display managers and the RetroPie-Developers used one of them.
I just want to know which they used and maybe some tipps for the configuration.
Raspbian and Ubuntu are basically Debian and I think if there is a solution for Raspbian there must be one for Ubuntu,too, no matter if ARM or x86.

Greetings

Nicke

Crescendo

my best setup is using Lubuntu, after installing them all and put the RetroPie into autostart, I disabled all the desktop element (including the LXPanel).

changed the background to black, put autologin, disable the screensaver.
edited the gnome-terminal (not LX Terminal) start setting to fullscreen without window deco.

so the only thing remained is just the mouse cursor.

the rest it behaving like RetroPie raspi version except the boot splash (Lubuntu), dunno how to change that....

Nickelino

I have a similar configuration. It runs on a Thinkpad T430s without deactivating the desktop elements.
In the background runs a script every 10 seconds that starts emulationstation if there is no active emulationstation instance running.

I thought getting it working like on the RPI would be better for the usage of the resources.

Another try was to get it working in a Openbox-session. My tries on my Zbox nano CI320 where successful.
This Thread in the kodi forum helped me with it and it works fine. http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=282593

On my T430s now it works great, too, but there ist one thing that disturbs and I have to start emulationstation in a LXsession and not only openbox.
This thing is that I cannot run some scripts from Emulationstation in Openbox-Only. I dont know why. If I start them from a Terminal in the Openbox session or LXsessionit works.
If I start them from Emulationstation running in a LXsession they work, too.

At this time I'm forced to use LXDE instead of Openbox-session. Openbox-only would be greater than the LXDE-session.

BuZz

@Nickelino said in RetroPie Window Manager, Display Manager:

I think there must be running some kind of a X-server because it is a requirement for EmulationStation.

ES doesn't require X - it requires SDL2. On the RPI SDL2 can run directly on the framebuffer (via dispmanx layer) so no Xserver required

On the PC X is required (or possibly something like wayland etc).

backstander

@Nickelino
I did the same as @cresfang using Lubuntu but with a quick Google search, I found this on another forum:

https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/223
derlehmann commented on Aug 22, 2014

found a solution that work for me. i install openbox and run this sh script:

#!/bin/bash
#!/bin/sh
xboxdrv -l 3 -s --dpad-as-button --trigger-as-button &

openbox &
emulationstation

killall openbox

killall xboxdrv