Raspbian Jessie Lite now available

[technix]

Finally an official Raspbian Server. Although preinstall a LAMP or LNMP stack out of the box with a small script setting up a self-signed SSL certificate can be an nice addition, as people can start coding their IoT stack with proper security from the get-go.

[DougieLawson]

How hard is it to run
sudo apt-get install apache2 phpmyadmin mariadb-server
to get an instant LAMP stack?

phpmyadmin will pull in the MySQL client (actually it's MariaDB) and all the php5 stuff you need.

[Zombievirus]

Check this out:

DietPi vs Raspbian Lite

We have a very clear Winner.

Regards.

[Khatharr]

What specific packages are present in Jessie that are not in Jessie Lite? Is it just X?

[HankB]

I just wanted to add my $0.02US to the conversation. I'm a newbie to Raspberry Pi but have been running Linux for decades. I have uses for headless systems and Jessie Lite filled the bill. My first project is a 'fireplace' where I have a Pi looping a video of a fireplace and displaying on a retired LCD monitor. SWMBO decorates her office for Christmas and used a picture of a fire in a cardboard fireplace. Next year she'll have a live fire. Jessie Lite is perfect for this application. There was another light weight (non-X) distro that I tried which was truly light weight. It didn't even have a lot of the basic commands I had come to expect. I don't object to 'apt-get install <whatever>' to flesh out a system but I stumbled when it came to figuring out what additional packages were needed to run omxplayer. That was an apt-get away (IIRC) with Jessie Lite.

I don't mean to deprecate the other distro. There's a place for something that is absolute minimum and you can add what you need. In my case I had a 4GB microSD so minimizing space was not that big a concern.

Many thanks to those who put together Jessie Lite. I like! It's a great middle ground between a full blown system and minimal install.

The other side of my project is a Pi Zero. There is no need for a network or USB though sound would be nice (for a crackling fire.) Perhaps by next Christmas I'll be able to get a Pi zero and dedicate my Model 2B to something else.

I'm staggered that the Pi can display the video using about 10 or 15% CPU and does this on 1 watt of energy.

Thanks!

[DirkS]

What specific packages are present in Jessie that are not in Jessie Lite? Is it just X?

X, all software that needs X (Sonic Pi, Scratch, ...), Python 3 and probably more

[malicious]

What specific packages are present in Jessie that are not in Jessie Lite? Is it just X?

Raspbian Lite has 734 missing packages("Full" has everything present in Lite). The entire list is here:

http://pastebin.com/p8qzyr1b

[Khatharr]

Thanks.

[Heater]

I'm very glad to see that there is no LAMP or LNMP stack in Raspbian Jessie Light.

My IoP (Internet of Pi) will not be using Apache. My servers are created in Node.js so as to make using websockets easy. Certainly I don't want to use the nightmare that is PHP. It's unlikly I would use MySql. nginx is kind of cool though.

Security, in terms of using HTTPS with self signed certs that is a trivial task in node.js. That is however only the beginning of all the things you have to take into account to secure a web server/service. Which is a long story...

[tiagojanz]

Hi,

Whats the absolute minimum to run a graphical QT applications without starting X?

thank you

[Alexander Brown]

Never tried it with qt before and it probably won't be pretty but sudo apt-get xterm should give you the smallest possible x and then xinit <appname> and away you go if you want to avoid x altogether you'll have to find another display technology like Wayland and I have absolutely no idea how you would make that work and it'll probably be bigger (at least in disk space) than zinit. I say apt-get xterm because although x doesn't need it xinit does and I nicley pulls in all the dependencies

[DanTup]

I have uses for headless systems and Jessie Lite filled the bill. My first project is a 'fireplace' where I have a Pi looping a video of a fireplace and displaying on a retired LCD monitor

Apologies if this is a dumb question (I'm a Linux noob), but how can you play a video without having some sort of GUI?

[rpdom]

I have uses for headless systems and Jessie Lite filled the bill. My first project is a 'fireplace' where I have a Pi looping a video of a fireplace and displaying on a retired LCD monitor

Apologies if this is a dumb question (I'm a Linux noob), but how can you play a video without having some sort of GUI?

Why would you need a GUI just to play a video?

The hardware is fully capable of displaying videos. It doesn't need menus, mouses, clicky boxes or and pretty pictures to do that. Software like omxplayer drives the hardware directly without any of the window dressing.

Also, for slower stuff, there is the frame buffer (a chunk of memory that is directly mapped onto the screen). That's how the console text is displayed - by writing the pixels to the frame buffer.

[DanTup]

Why would you need a GUI just to play a video?

The hardware is fully capable of displaying videos. It doesn't need menus, mouses, clicky boxes or and pretty pictures to do that. Software like omxplayer drives the hardware directly without any of the window dressing.

Sure; like I said, I'm a noob. I assumed that without the GUI it was just a simple text console. I can't play video through SSH, so I figured it was the same sort of thing. Interesting to know that isn't the case! (though I presume there are limited apps/types of apps written to work this way?)

Also, for slower stuff, there is the frame buffer (a chunk of memory that is directly mapped onto the screen). That's how the console text is displayed - by writing the pixels to the frame buffer.

I guess this makes sense! Raspbian Lite is interesting to me, but I'd also like to use the screen for some things; so it's good to understand the possibilities. Thanks!

[ShiftPlusOne]

Why would you need a GUI just to play a video?

The hardware is fully capable of displaying videos. It doesn't need menus, mouses, clicky boxes or and pretty pictures to do that. Software like omxplayer drives the hardware directly without any of the window dressing.

Sure; like I said, I'm a noob. I assumed that without the GUI it was just a simple text console. I can't play video through SSH, so I figured it was the same sort of thing. Interesting to know that isn't the case! (though I presume there are limited apps/types of apps written to work this way?)

Also, for slower stuff, there is the frame buffer (a chunk of memory that is directly mapped onto the screen). That's how the console text is displayed - by writing the pixels to the frame buffer.

I guess this makes sense! Raspbian Lite is interesting to me, but I'd also like to use the screen for some things; so it's good to understand the possibilities. Thanks!

There's a blog by a guy who switched to console only. Unfortunately, it's unmaintained and is suffering from bit rot, but there's is a lot of great information there.
https://kmandla.wordpress.com/software/
https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/


Everything you can do from the desktop, you can do from the console.

[DanTup]

There's a blog by a guy who switched to console only. Unfortunately, it's unmaintained and is suffering from bit rot, but there's is a lot of great information there.
https://kmandla.wordpress.com/software/


Everything you can do from the desktop, you can do from the console.

Thanks for the link, I'll take a look

[DanTup]

So, this all got me thinking... I installed Raspian Lite then x-window-system and iceweasel and have been able to load Iceweasel without any desktop environment (this is great; it lets me keep my desktop-free Pi but still run the kids javascript games and airconsole on the TV!).

The only problem is that it's not taking up the full screen (the console does, but when I start X, it's just a quarter of the screen). If anyone has experience with setting up like this (a full-screen browser, ideally Iceweasel/Firefox or Chromium with no DE installed) I'd love to know (I posted on Linux SE too if that's your thing). Thanks!

[ShiftPlusOne]

The only problem is that it's not taking up the full screen

Could you take a photo of what you mean? If you're running X with nothing else, you'll have problems like that. I'd recommend at least installing openbox as well (a windows manager). Maybe pressing F11 might do what you want, but I don't know off the top of my head. There are definitely browsers (like kweb by one of the forum members) which might be more suitable than iceweasel.

[DanTup]

The only problem is that it's not taking up the full screen

Could you take a photo of what you mean? If you're running X with nothing else, you'll have problems like that. I'd recommend at least installing openbox as well (a windows manager). Maybe pressing F11 might do what you want, but I don't know off the top of my head. There are definitely browsers (like kweb by one of the forum members) which might be more suitable than iceweasel.

I think what's happening is just the default window size for Iceweasel sucks, but I can't resize it launched this way. F11 just hides the browser chrome but keeps the same size. The cursor turns into a big black "X" when moved outside of the Iceweasel window (so it's definitely not due to the Pi not outputting the correct resolution or anything).

I was trying to avoid a display/window manager as it seems I've got 90% of what I want and that seems like bloat; but I may be forced

I don't really want any browser other than Chromium of Firefox because I've been writing some JavaScript games for the kids which use very bleeding-edge APIs (like speech synthesis) that are more likely to work here (though my testing of these has been problematic, even using these browsers!).

I'll try and get a pic tomorrow and post back (I'll start a new thread and post a link here, to avoid hijacking this one further).

[ShiftPlusOne]

If you want to manipulate windows, you should use a window manager. Openbox is very light, but there are lighter options if you need them. There are also options which don't show a border or anything, but allow you to tile windows or script how they should appear.

[DanTup]

If you want to manipulate windows, you should use a window manager. Openbox is very light, but there are lighter options if you need them. There are also options which don't show a border or anything, but allow you to tile windows or script how they should appear.

Cool; I'll have a look at that tomorrow. I figured since all I wanted was a single window always fullscreen that I didn't need one; but I might be complicating things for little benefit!

Thanks!

[cahir1987]

Hello, after 'sudo apt-get install lxde-core' i have error:

Code: Select all

0 upgraded, 237 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/71.9 MB of archives.
After this operation, 243 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
 dict-common::dc_set: dictionaries-common/default-wordlist is already set to
      [english (Webster's Second International English wordlist)]. Preserving it.
Selecting previously unselected package alsa-base.
dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
 files list file for package 'libice6:armhf' is missing final newline
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Any one have sugestion?

[DanTup]

Could you take a photo of what you mean?

I posted a thread with a pic in to avoid hijacking this one:
viewtopic.php?p=940994

If you want to manipulate windows, you should use a window manager. Openbox is very light, but there are lighter options if you need them. There are also options which don't show a border or anything, but allow you to tile windows or script how they should appear.

Probably best to keep this in the other thread; but I'm open to suggestions since I'm not getting anywhere without... I want something absolutely basic that just has one window, no menus etc.. My kids have a tendency to find their way out of anything (currently they use my Chromebook and manage to bring up terminal windows and all sorts and can't get back to the browser!).

[cpcnw]

OK so here is my 'lite+ desktop list'

Openbox
Wbar
Netsurf
Spacefm
Sylpheed
Leafpad
MuPDF
Viewnior

Just need something to play music stream from SomaFM and I am happy!

[seen the xmms2 thread - but is there any lite players similar in repos?]

[mythryll]

the combination of
user: pi
password: rasberry
doesn't work for jessie lite
Any ideas?