$ cat article_0x08.txt
Testing a RPI as daily driver desktop (2020-12) version 0x08 -- @sairukau
Replacing a dead i7 2600K / Radeon RX580 / 16GB DDR3 temporarily
===============================================================================
Changelog
===============================================================================
v0x08 Attempted an updated to 5.10.2 see rpi-update section
Displays boot in the alternate ports OK now
Compiled OBS for a laugh
Compiled syncterm to get back to L.O.R.D again
v0x07 Devilutionx 1.1.0 has an arm7l build, happy days
Compiled ezquake, not yet happy days
Mini-HDMI to VGA adapters arrived see hardware section
Added some clarifying notes to Expected use cases
Have ordered a powered usb hub to run the keyboard/mouse and webcam to
free up onboard ports
Tried out some openarena, grabbed some basic fps numbers
v0x06 Upgraded to kernel 5.10 then rolled back to 5.4, see rpi-update section
Compiled retroarch for testing
v0x05 Tested out chiaki (PS4 remote play)
Gave up on thunderbird and went back to mutt
v0x04 Fleshed out social media approach, primarily use bitlbee w/irssi already
Compiled ckb-next and disabled keyboard rgb
Figured out support for Mute/Volup/VolDown media keys
Looking into IDEs normally use vim but was investigating vscodium when
the i7 bit it and vscodium has an arm deb available, wow
Tested minetest and doco'd some FPS notes
v0x03 Remove firefox-esr and use chromium-browser
browserpass extension for chromium-browser
profile manager wrapper for chromium
chromium-browser settings info listed
Logitech C910 webcam tested
found media keys aren't working on keyboard
v0x02 Connected up Bose QC35s through BT
Applied fix for 3.5mm jack output with 2 HDMI displays
Added speaker and sd card info
Confirmed lightdm display config carries through to xfce session
Fixed typo for pinentry (probably more)
v0x01 Initial Publication
===============================================================================
Expected Use cases
===============================================================================
- System administration
- ssh (terminal)
- remote desktop (remmina)
- vnc (remmina)
- Developement work
- python
- bash
- compiling (probably do this on vm now)
- Web browsing using Firefox (yes i was a FF user)
- depends web browser
- Chat
- IRC (irssi)
- Gajim
- Skype
- Hangouts
- Social Media
- depends web browser and/or bitlbee
- discord, no arm app (so see line above)
- Watching Streaming service: youtube, twitch
- depends web browser
- NFS mount remote fs through automount
- Local s/hdd media from dock
- performs OK, nothing much to report here
- Gaming
- not sure how far we'll push this, considr it light-gaming
- might consider steamlink to a remote machine (doesn't exist yet)
- Wine applications
- might have to offload to a remote (pre-existing) windows VM
Note: while I have other systems I could have imaged another OS from, that
wasn't really the point of this exercise. Just decided to see how we went with
the shipped product
===============================================================================
Hardware (was Setup)
===============================================================================
RPI4
- 4G Model
xDual Head on HDMI (Shipped adapters)x
- text is unreadable on displays
- ignored edid in config.txt to get second screen up at 1920x1080
- NOTE: no longer HDMI see Dual Head on VGA
Dual Head on VGA
- replaced Dual Head on HDMI
- Using UGREEN active micro hdmi to vga adapters
Corsair Keyboard/Mouse (RGB :/)
- USB Keyboard
- USB Mouse
Shintaro (powered) USB HDD Dock
4x USBs consumed
- 2x USB 2.0 k/m
- 2x USB 3.0 hdd/webcam
Ethernet
Bose Quiet Comfort 35 over Bluetooth
2x 32" FullHD (cheap) TVs
- 1x Sanyo (Native: 1920x1080_60)
- 1x Dick Smith (Native: 1360x768)
External Logitec speaker set 1sub+2t 3.5mm jack
32GB SD Card (shipped with RPi)
- don't know what class when I remove the sd card next I'll make a note
Noobs (shipped with RPi)
- Raspbian OS (Full)
===============================================================================
Changes
===============================================================================
OS Changes
- Install python3 and set as default
- Install ansible
The rest is deployed through ansible (locally)
Window Manager
- XFCE
- menulibre
Software
$HOME/devel/ansible/raspbian/packages.yaml
===============================================================================
Migration
===============================================================================
I am looking to migrate from a dead i7 2600K setup temporarily so i'm only
going to bring across some previous settings from my old environment
- Ansible playbooks
- no issue
- XFCE
- no issues
- Firefox
- see Usage section
- Thunderbird
- see Usage section
- SSH
- no issues
- GNUPG
- see Configuration section
- pass password store
- see gnupg
- gajim
- no issues
- social media and chat
- a lot of networks are integrated with irssi using bitlbee
- twitter, skype, steam, hangouts, discord, mastadon
- any others can be used in chromium-browser (ff-esr lagged out)
- Automounts NFS
- migrated configuration without issue
- mounts to NAS are up
===============================================================================
Usage
===============================================================================
Keyboard/Mouse
Intermittent issues on reboot enumerating the USB devices leaves then
non-working in the OS works find in recovery mode though. Have to reinsert the
devices a few times on occasion. Seems to only on a cold boot
the ckb-next software isn't available in the raspbian repo so i'm stuck with
idiotic rgb until i see if i can get that build for raspbian
ckb-next: https://github.com/ckb-next/ckb-next/wiki/Linux-Installation
ckb-next compiled without issue following the standard debian instructions
Installed, migrated over settings and started ckb ... no issues
media keys don't work
- Created custom wrapper for patcl
- Added custom keyboard shortcuts for
- XF86AudioLowerVolume
- XF86AudioRaiseVolume
- XF86AudioMute
Noted the pulse plugin applet is laggy
Screens
RPI will only boot with screens configured as
- HDMI-1 Dick Smitch
- HDMI-2 Sanyo
HDMI
Text is horrible to read over HDMI on these screens, i knew this going in after
experimenting on my HTPC years ago. Normally i run VGA on these screens and
tweak the Modelines
Have purchased some UGREEN Active MicroHDMI to VGA adapters to test
Have been replaced HDMI with URGREEN Adapter
HDMI to VGA Adapters
It has been a long existing problem that my TVs as monitors solution results
in unreadable text, on the old system I was converting DP to VGA on this new
system i had no choice but to use HDMI while I was waiting for some adapters
to arrive.
The adapter I have now are UGREEN branded micro hdmi to vga adapters
They are externally powered through USB (optional) and do as they say. Both
screens are up @1920x1080 60hz with the pre-existing configuration
Some items of note
- Enable hdmi_boost=4 in the config.txt
- Blacks seem washed out without reconfiguring the displays, but in fairness
this may have been a pre-existing problem.
- Some potential lag introduced, still testing this
- If it actually is it seems relatively stable so I should be able to
adjust to it easily enough
- I dont have tools to test this, so it'll be a subjective measure
- Text is crystal clear (as expected), which was the goal
Default Performance
Desktop
- Laggy and almost unusable with 2 displays
- Nothing is accelerated by default
Web Browsing
- Comes with chromium, i cannot migrate my setup to chromium from FF
- Turns out firefox-esr wouldn't import profiles
Audio
- Doesn't work through 3.5mm jack (raspi-config), HDMI audio OK
Firefox
This is an absolutely horrible experience, firefox-esr is available this is
based on (currently) Firefox 78. Video playback is non-functional, audio cuts
out, sites do not function.
So for some key complaints
- Sites display in the mobile version, can be fixed with a custom UA
- Amazon.com does not function on this older browser, can be fixed with a custom UA
- Audio works then cuts out and I haven't found a way to restore
- Video playback never starts on youtube but did on twitch
- Migrating profile across from the desktop release is impossible because the
version is too old all profiles needed to be recreated
** ended up removing firefox-esr all together
Chromium
This is not a browser i'm used too and I can't import my profiles across easily
atm but it seems to function OK in general compared with Firefox so its
probably a preferable option in the long run
Thunderbird
- Seems to perform horribly but would not find my existing settings so I need
to revisit this
- Using imap anyway so i may return to Mutt as my daiy driver
- Gave up on this, it wouldn't import the existing profiles and I have better
things to do
VLC
- Can playback twitch/youtube streams
- Consumes a ridiculous amount of CPU decoding (even hardware accellerated in
theory)
Storage performance
This is over USB 3.0, I haven't completed any specific tests but it seems
reasonable enough for general use.
Network Performance
Works well enough need to do some specific tests, speedtest results are
comparable to my desktop results
$ speedtest-cli --simple
Ping: 16.382 ms
Download: 273.90 Mbit/s
Upload: 41.90 Mbit/s
Development
Normally use vim for developerment in general but I had started to look into
transitioning to codium the unbranded port. So to pickup where I left off ...
vscodium is actually build for armhf which will run on the pi4, this was
suprising to say the least. performance seems OK generally but I'm not doing
too much with it yet
get the latest armhf deb build from
https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases/latest
# dpkg -i
===============================================================================
Customisations
===============================================================================
HDMI
This is really specific to my setup being the screens are both different but I
am ignoring the EDID of the displays to get them both up on 1920x1080.
# vi /boot/config.txt
add this line, nfi what the 0xa5000080 represents for this setting atm
hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080
Both displays come up at 1920x1080 after this without additional modelines
The displays based on the boot issue are mapped incorrectly so I run the
following to correct it.
$ xrandr --output HDMI-2 --primary --left-of HDMI-1
NB: .xprofile does not run atm so putting it there makes no difference
NB: this is no longer an issue with hdmi_boost on
You can work around this issue but configuring script that lightdm runs at
startup once the screens are configured it carries through the xfce
# vi /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
display-setup-script=
Window Manager
I wanted to use XFCE not LXDE so had to configure lightdm to run the session.
I know you can configure lightdm to allow user selection but that isn't
necessary in this case
# vi /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
set the following
session-wrapper=xfce4-session
Use display-setup-script to setup your screens through xrandr see
Customisations -> HDMI.
Python 3
Replaced python2 with python3 ... time to catch up
# apt-get install python3
# update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python2.7 1
# update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3.7 2
# update-alternatives --config python
Audio
3.5mm jack output fixed by applying a custom udev ruleset from
- https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/3-5mm-audio-output-not-working-on-rpi4-with-20-04/22456/7
# vi /etc/udev/rules.d/79-rpi-pulseadio-fixes.rules
Rule content
SUBSYSTEM!="sound*", GOTO="end"
ACTION!="change", GOTO="end"
KERNEL!="card*", GOTO="end"
# remove the 'internal' sound form factor, so more descriptive
# names are used in pulseaudio for bcm... entries
ENV{SOUND_FORM_FACTOR}=="internal", ENV{SOUND_FORM_FACTOR}=""
# uncomment to ignore audio sink on HDMI1, even if present, so that
# headphones + HDMI0 audio will work in pulseaudio - temporary workaround
ATTRS{id}=="b2", ENV{PULSE_IGNORE}="1"
LABEL="end"
Then enter the mixer and turn on Analog Mono Output for bcm2835 Headphones
Not sure why its mono, perhaps its a limitation of the jack.
Removed the default pi user
===============================================================================
Accelation
===============================================================================
Configuring Accelartion
There is only the fake kms driver available and i'm not particularly across
the vulkan support etc that is supposed to be coming, the rpi foundation
really doesn't seem to give a crap about real desktop performance on this
device because all the effort seems to be one man shows and not a roadmapped
effort.
This setup isn't terrible and make a distinct different to performance once
completed.
These references aren't exactly what i had to do but lets run with it and I'll
doco my stuff thereafter, e.g. dont enable 4k support.
References:
- https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/rpi4-ubuntu-mate-hw-video-acceleration.html
Setup acceleration
# vi /boot/config.txt
Add the following
## 4k support
#hdmi_enable_4kp60=1
## fake kms
dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
#dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d-pi4
## real kms need to test
#dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
#dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4
# nfi need to look into it
max_framebuffers=2
# memory for GPU, 512 was crap
gpu_mem=128
Reboot and test
# cat /proc/device-tree/soc/firmwarekms@7e600000/status
# cat /proc/device-tree/v3dbus/v3d@7ec04000/status
both should return "okay"
Configure acceleration in Applications
Firefox
about:config
layers.acceleration.force-enabled -> true
Chromium
chrome://flags
Override software rending list -> Enabled
VLC
Tools -> Preferences -> Video -> OpenGL video output
NB: i'm not convinced the fkms driver actually offloads this I was seeing 400%
CPU usage on twitch streams in top which is 100% usage on every core
===============================================================================
Post Acceleration Performance - fkms (fake kms)
===============================================================================
Firefox
Video playback starts on youtube and twitch but hdmi audio cuts out pretty
quickly
Chromium
Video playback is near perfect on both platforms
Amazon works
VLC
As per the accelation config section, i'm not convinced the fkms achieves
anything of note here
Gaming
See dedicated section
===============================================================================
Configuration
===============================================================================
gpg-agent (for pass)
the configured pinentry program wasn't available on the rpi this presented as
a "no secret key available" error which is shiteful but a list-secret-keys
showed the key for decryption was available and could be confirmed by checking
the ~/.password-store/.gpg-id entry
Was gnome3, now gtk2
$ vi ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
pinentry-program /usr/bin/pinentry-gtk-2
$ gpg-agent kill-agent bye
or
update-alternatives --config pinentry
bluetooth
no applet available, not the end of the world but annoying from a desktop
perspective
# apt-get install blueman pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
$ pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover
$ mkdir ~/.config/autostart
$ ln -s /usr/bin/blueman-applet ~/.config/autostart/
# service restart bluetooth
remmina
Migrated settings without issue
Performance seems on par with what I remember on the desktop OS (rdp)
===============================================================================
Replace firefox(-esr) with chromium-browser
===============================================================================
As a longtime firefox user this is a fair undertaking, need
- multiple profiles
- pass intergration
- proxy support
- DOH support
chromium-browser
integration with pass needs
- browserpass ext
- browserpass native messager (not available for arm 32b)
pass integration (browserpass extension)
- install golang
# apt-get install golang
- add arm compilation support: https://github.com/sairuk/browserpass-native
$ git clone https://github.com/sairuk/browserpass-native.git
$ make browserpass-arm
$ make BIN=browserpass-arm configure
$ sudo make BIN=browserpass-arm install
- add the extension in chromium
Multiple Profiles
mimic firefox's profile screen
will be handled at launch with custom profile browser written in tk
will leverage --user-data-dir=DIR optiona
profiles are now handled by a custom wrapper chromium-profile (bash/zenity)
Proxy support
must be handled on launch by the command line
see external multiple profiles solution
e.g. --proxy-server=socks5://127.0.0.1:9050
DOH Support
Needs to be configured via "Secure DNS Lookups"
chrome://flags/#dns-over-https
Doesn't work like firefox, still uses OS DNS anyway upgrades if recognized
General settings
Some notes for myself where settings are when as opposed to FF
chrome://settings
Start-up
- Browser to a specific page -> per Profile
Sync and Google service
Other Google services
- Allow Chromium sign-in -> Off
Search Engine
- Search engine used in the address bar -> DuckDuckGo
Passwords
- Offer to save passwords -> Off
- Auto Sign-in -> Off
Security
- Safe browsing -> Standard Protection
Cookes and other site data
- Block third-part cookies -> On
- Send a 'Do Not Track' request -> On
- Clear cookes and site data when you quite Chromium -> per Profile
===============================================================================
Gaming
===============================================================================
Not expecting anything much in regards to this, most games will not run on arm
and Steam is not available for arm but Steamlink is so that may be a possiblity
Box86
I've played with this before its an interesting product may investigate whats
available here
Steamlink
Its available for pi and I have a laptop lying around that runs Steam
currently
** have run out of usb ports for the SL adapter
Emulation
Have a bit of an interest in emulation performance
Retroarch compiled from source using a couple of guides
- https://gist.github.com/ematysek/fc01a47c7d34f0ca4dad41226c53ff6e
- https://gist.github.com/AlexMax/32e5d038a66ce57253e740ea75736805
$ git clone https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch.git
$ cd RetroArch
$ git checkout v1.9.0
followed guides are this, set CFLAGS/configure
$ make -j4
$ sudo make install
run retroarch to create config files
$ retroarch -f
edit ~/.config/retroarch/retroarch.cfg and edit/update this line
core_updater_buildbot_cores_url = "http://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/linux/armhf/latest/"
picodrive core segfaulted, genesis_plus_gx was OK
sound was acceptable no noticable input lag
Minetest
Use as an fps benchmark maybe?
- 800x600 windowed ~25fps (default)
- 1280x720 windowed ~23fps
- 1920x1080 Fullscreen ~17fps
Chiaki (PS4 Remote play)
Well this is something i never would have expected to be possible but with
some massaging chiaki compiles for the rpi albeit without sound. The
recommended fork is from zerojay.
https://github.com/zerojay/chiaki
After a successful compilation the binary will end up in
/build/gui/
Sound requires an upgrade to QT, upgrade to 5.12 and patch chiaki and
recompile (ta RedMarsBlueMoon)
Install Qt5.12 from https://github.com/koendv/qt5-opengl-raspberrypi
# wget https://github.com/koendv/qt5-opengl-raspberrypi/releases/download/v5.12.5-1/qt5-opengl-dev_5.12.5_armhf.deb
# apt install ./qt5-opengl-dev_5.12.5_armhf.deb
Add QT_SELECT to your bashrc
$ vi ~/.bashrc
export QT_SELECT=qt5-opengl
Recomile (noting that cmake will complain about directory conflicts)
Map the qt5 libraries into the chiaki dir so they use the 5.12 version
$ ldd ./chiaki | grep -i qt
libQt5Multimedia.so.5 => /usr/lib/qt5.12/lib/libQt5Multimedia.so.5 (0xb6e51000)
libQt5OpenGL.so.5 => /usr/lib/qt5.12/lib/libQt5OpenGL.so.5 (0xb6e0b000)
libQt5Svg.so.5 => /usr/lib/qt5.12/lib/libQt5Svg.so.5 (0xb6dc4000)
libQt5Network.so.5 => /usr/lib/qt5.12/lib/libQt5Network.so.5 (0xb546a000)
libQt5Widgets.so.5 => /usr/lib/qt5.12/lib/libQt5Widgets.so.5 (0xb4f4e000)
libQt5Gui.so.5 => /usr/lib/qt5.12/lib/libQt5Gui.so.5 (0xb4a55000)
libQt5Core.so.5 => /usr/lib/qt5.12/lib/libQt5Core.so.5 (0xb4560000)
$ sudo make install
Runs fine, set it to 720p/30fps
ezQuake
I am a big fan of Quakeworld, its one of my base requirements for gaming on a
pc and nQuake is my go to which leverages ezQuake. There is no arm package for
nQuake available so I attempted to compile my own
The application compiled without error _but_ running it on the fkms driver
results in a general error for the id engine based games
$ ./ezquake-linux-arm
Received signal 11, exiting...
Looking through the source it doesn't seem like opengles is attached to any
linux builds restricted to android/ios so I'll have to chase this up later
deviloutionX
The diablo opensourced engine, works and it is glorious, there is alread and
arm build released for this, so just install it with apt to pickup the
dependancies
Openarena
Enable fps reporting with /set cg_drawfps 1
- 720x400 windowed, low geo, vertex lighting ~60fps
- 1920x1080 fullscreen, defauls 10fps
Test candidates
- OpenMW
- ScummVM
- DOOM (GZ/Chocolate)
- Aliens vs Predator
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=100152&sid=5e343e2029147759f04eefbe08dff29d
- Parsec https://parsec.app/
===============================================================================
Wine Applications
===============================================================================
I need to run Clrmame Pro or an equivilent but that may need to be offloaded to
an external host
Starcraft & Diablo II
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=215056
===============================================================================
Extra Credit
===============================================================================
Just some additional items to potentially test
Docker FBNeo Dat infrastructure
Might be interesting to see what the performance of my FBNeo dat pipeline is
like on this hardware, it would need to be converted to compile the arm
versions of fbneo to generate the dats
Filer
A python/mysql based file database that supports external media, this will
function but the performance should be an interesting test
Webcam
Logitech C910 Webcam performance
Works perfectly fine in discord test area, no noticable lag
OBS
Dependancies through ansible
$ git clone – recursive https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio.git
$ cd obs-studio
$ mkdir build && cd build
Testing this
$ cmake -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS='-mfpu=neon -mtune=cortex-a72 -march=armv8-a' -DUNIX_STRUCTURE=1 -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..
$ make -j4
$ sudo make install
Had major UI scaling descrepencies in this application so compiling against
qt5.12 as a test. UI Scale is still stuff between monitors
Capped minetest through OBS, as expected it completed brutalized the host
resources wise, minetest was playable at ~2FPS.
syncterm
https://blog.paradroyd.com/post/138091989521/compiling-syncterm-on-raspbian
$ wget http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/syncterm-src.tgz
*install ncurses dev (ansible)
$ make -j4 SRC_ROOT=$HOME/devel/syncterm/src
$ sudo make install
===============================================================================
rpi-update
===============================================================================
Wanted to test out the kms driver so upgraded the firmware. Throws a partition
size warning prior to starting update.
Starting on kernel 5.4.79
# rpi-update
Get a warning about parition size 255m v 256m recommended, confirm twice
Ended up on kernel 5.10.0
Tried the kms driver which actually displayed a desktop on kernel 5.10 but had
a corrupt mouse cursor. Rolled back to fkms with the intent to debug.
Started experiencing hard locks during video playback while on 5.10.0
Rolled back to kernel 5.4.79 (commit 8a4d444d6a621ff56fa8941480c40fe4587c7a98)
# rpi-update 8a4d444d6a621ff56fa8941480c40fe4587c7a98
Back to kernel 5.4.79
Upgraded to 5.10.2
- No graphical artifacts with kms driver
- reconfigured to use fkms driver
- Video still hard locks but it appears its actually related to the audio
stream perhaps just through the 3.5mm jackso need to investigate that
further, video did not hard lock when audio was configured (no ouput)
through one of the hdmi devices.
- https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-firmware/issues/250
- rolled back to 5.4.79
Upgraded to 5.4.81 (c91312ae1df5011bd77826e49d2b914b6d0e9b08)
- Booting was not stable on this firmware
- Rolled back 5.4.79