Procedure to have the Hildon Desktop running on Gutsy

This is the step-by-step procedure to have the Hildon Desktop that will be used in the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project.

Warning: Albeit possible, having the mobile system running in a normal Gutsy installation is more probable to cause problems, specially in these early stages of development therefore, it's safer to have a chroot environment, which is what described below.

Preparing the base environment

• Prepare a gutsy chroot in ${DIR}:

   $ sudo debootstrap gutsy ${DIR} http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
   $ sudo mount --bind /tmp ${DIR}/tmp
   $ sudo mount -t proc none ${DIR}/proc
   $ sudo mount --bind /sys ${DIR}/sys

• Everything should be ready, so:

   $ sudo chroot ${DIR}

Packages

Those are the basic packages needed to actually have the environment.

• hildon-desktop
• hildon-theme-plankton
• gtk2-engines-sapwood
• sdk-default-icons
• dbus-x11
• language-pack-en
• matchbox

The meta-package ubuntu-mobile provides all the necessary packages and it's dependencies so, inside the chroot:

• Add the universe repository to /etc/apt/source.conf.
• Update the repositories and install ubuntu-mobile.

Development packages

Those are packages that are likely to be used when developing applications using the environment above so you can have the hildon desktop shown in your normal desktop.

• xserver-xephyr

Preparation

• Create a normal user inside the chroot.
• Prepare the startup script.

   #!/bin/bash
   
   PREFIX=/usr
   THEME=${PREFIX}/share/themes/plankton
  
   export DISPLAY=:1
  
   export GTK2_RC_FILES=${THEME}/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:${THEME}/gtk-2.0/gtkrc.maemo_af_desktop
   export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
   export LC_ALL=en_GB.UTF-8
   export LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8
  
   exec /usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconfd-2 &
  
   exec ${PREFIX}/bin/matchbox-window-manager -display ${DISPLAY} \
                                             -theme ${THEME}/matchbox/theme.xml \
                                             -use_titlebar yes \
                                             -use_desktop_mode plain \
                                             -use_lowlight no \
                                             -use_cursor yes \
                                             -use_super_modal yes &
  
   exec ${PREFIX}/lib/sapwood/sapwood-server &
  
   exec ${PREFIX}/bin/hildon-desktop

• Edit /etc/hildon-desktop/desktop.conf and remove or comment out the [Statusbar] session if necessary.

Running

• Enter the chroot and su - to the user created above. That will start the dbus session.
• Outside the chroot execute Xephyr like this:

   Xephyr :1 -host-cursor -screen 800x480x16 -dpi 96 -ac

• Execute the hildon-desktop script as the user you created above.

As result, you should see the hildon desktop inside the Xephyr window.