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BB VIEW 4.3": Debian desktop is a lonely cursor

Former Member

After two days of trying to follow obsolete and/or incomplete and/or ambiguous instructions on this and other forums, I managed to get the BB VIEW cape going with a 4.3" LCD. And by going, I mean that after the touch calibration, which completes uneventfully, I get a black screen with a lonely cursor. The cursor tracks smoothly and precisely, I am not getting poor touchscreen tracking that some have reported.

 

If I hit Crtl+Alt+Fx (0 < x < 7), I get a terminal with a login prompt, if I then hit Ctrl+Alt+F7, I recover the empty screen with a cursor.

 

Linux version is Wheezy, Linux beaglebone 3.8.13-bone79 #1 SMP Tue Oct 13 20:44:55 UTC 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux, hardware of BeagleBone Black is Rev. C.

 

So,

 

(a) have I done something wrong? or

 

(b) is this the expected behavior, the 4.3" screen is deemed by (parts of) Linux to be insufficient to display desktop constituents other than the cursor?

 

Many thanks!

 

Vladimir

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  • 0

    under Linux, you have 7 different terminals that you can switch using Ctrl+Alt+Fx keys. These are pre built for your use. For instance I may use the F1 for root access and F2 for a normal user account at the same time. Linux can handle many users logged into the system at the same time through multi tasking. Once you login, you can start a window with STARTX if Windows-X is loaded and configured correctly.

    Clem

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  • 0

    under Linux, you have 7 different terminals that you can switch using Ctrl+Alt+Fx keys. These are pre built for your use. For instance I may use the F1 for root access and F2 for a normal user account at the same time. Linux can handle many users logged into the system at the same time through multi tasking. Once you login, you can start a window with STARTX if Windows-X is loaded and configured correctly.

    Clem

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  • 0 in reply to clem57

    Yes, the Ctrl+Alt+Fx terminals work, however there is no GUI desktop under Ctrl+Alt+F7. Only a lonely cursor. No other graphical elements of a desktop appear. startx doesn't work with some error messages, which I am not eager now to reproduce.

     

    And that's why: Folks over at the BeagleBoard community informed me that Debian 7.9 is no longer supported and is actively dissuaded from use. BB-View is supported under Debian 8.4 directly, without kernel patching. Instructions (that contradict the obsolete, incorrect, and incomplete documentation provided by element14) are here: https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-65082?#comment-86248

     

    I've been happily running Debian 8.4 and making use of its desktop.