Hi, Ive had great fun playing with DietPi. So far, I have a headless RP that boots and runs my app. (Console) I have a new graphical app that runs great but I now want to build an appliance that boots and runs my app, nothing else.
In otherwords, I dont want any sort of desktop, Just my app, running on a 7" monitor. Can you give me the general direction to go with this? What would I need to install on the Dietpi to be able to run my (Graphical) app? Is there a better tool than Dietpi? Just some direction would be great!
ghamm
In which environment does your app run, does it use X11 or a direct GL-based method?
Also a question is if it requires a login session or if it can run outside of it.
E.g. you could enable console auto login via dietpi-autostart. Then you could add a line to ~/profile which executes your app. This file/script is executes after the user is logged in, hence the autologin should be enabled then.
If your app does not require a user session and can run as root, then you could as well add a script to/like /var/lib/dietpi/postboot.d/you_script, which runs your app. Scripts inside this dir are executes BEFORE the login prompt, hence before any user login. So this would start a bid faster.
The most elegant solution would be a separate systemd unit/service which you can build a way that it runs exactly at the boot stage you want it and as custom user and/or group you want it, and you can define permissions/capabilities exactly like you require it. But this is fine tuning then, if you like to tinker/learn about systemd.
I have my diet pi running my console app on startup without any problems. Very happy with it…
Now, I have a GUI app that Ive written in Lazarus and Free Pascal. I want it to fun full screen as a kiosk app.
My question is, what do I need to install to give me a the graphical enviroment like the Raspberry? My app runs great on the raspberry, so Im assuming I should stay with that…
Hmm, I am not too experienced with graphics at all. Generally it depends which frontend/driver your program uses. Does it use the Xserver by default, so that it can be started via xinit or from an X-based desktop like LDXE? Then you need to install the Xserver (X.org) of course. But there are other possibilities using OpenGLES, EGL, KMS/DRM and all such, or a different frontend like SDL/SDL2, which then uses the backends/drivers it was compiled against.
Generally when installing the Xserver via DietPi-Software, usual required graphics drivers (e.g. Mali) and mesa GL packages and all such are installed along with it. On an x86 system you would need to install the related graphics card driver (Intel, Nvidia, AMD), manually from APT repository. Nvidia driver can as well be installed via dietpi-config > Video Options