Laptop as DJ station
 

Was not sure if to place in hardware or software.

I was gifted an old laptop:
80GBhdd
512MB ram
1.4 Celeron
Nvidia Go

I wanted to turn this into either a DJ station ( the person that would use it is not very pc savvy.)
It would be nice to have it boot straight into the GUI of what ever dj software would be able to run well on the above hardware platform. No password / No Login Prompt.

However, the screen has artifacts ( from post , cCMOS forward ). I tore it apart and reseated and cleaned everything with no results or change. I have had it running with ubuntu but dont want to go that route.

Is it possible to make this a single purpose device ( no desktop just a DJ mixing board or queue )?

If I cant get the artifacts to clear up ( seem to be something to do with the refreshing of screen and garbled CMOS text ), could this device serve as a headless router?

Thanks,

John

GDM can be configured to automatically log in as a nominated user.

You should be able to launched a single application instead of a desktop environment by using one of .xsession or .xinitrc. Which one you need to use might depend on which distro you are using. You could always just create one as a symlink to the other though. One potential tripping point with this is that if the application does not have a command line option to allow you to launch it fullscreen, it's probably not going to be very usable once it's launched. Though maybe you could also launch a window manager such as metacity... hmmm, I might have to try that.

Create a new user. Press ctrl-alt-f2. Log in as that user.


Edit the .xsession file and make it contain this

Now get a graphical login screen up and log in as that user. You will find that Firefox launches automatically and nothing else is running. However Firefox won't fill all the available space on the screen and there is no way to make it do so because there is no window manager running. Firefox has no command line option that allows it to be launched in full screen mode. So although you've got an environment with just the one application running, it's not very nice. If you close Firefox the user is logged out.

If you edit the user's .xsession file so it looks like


then log back in as that user you will find Firefox is still the only application running and it's still not using all the space on the screen. However you now have window decorations because the metacity window manager is running, so you can maximise the window in the normal manner. If you minimize the window it vanishes, but you can press alt-tab to get it back.

So that, along with having GDM log in automatically as that user, is basically how you can give a user an environment with just one application. If the application you want to run can be somehow made to launch in full screen mode, either by passing a command line argument or by putting something in a configuration file that it looks at in the user's home directory, then that makes it all a bit neater.


If there are problems with the video output before the operating system has started to load then there is a problem with the hardware. (Posting in the Hardware section isn't going to get you help with that because it's not a case of getting the hardware with Linux, it's a case of the hardware being faulty.) You should be able to determine whether the fault is with the monitor or the video card by attaching an external monitor.

I don't see why the laptop couldn't be used as a headless router.

Maybe you could use opendjmix?

(( 00 ))

Why start metacity, I thought you don't want a window manager?

The OP didn't say anything about not wanting a window manager running. They only said they wanted to boot straight in to the application.

You don't have to have a window manager running. I was merely illustrating that if the application doesn't allow you to launch it in full screen mode somehow, they you can't make it fill the screen if you don't have a window manager running. If you application launches automatically but draws a window which occupies only say 2/3 of the screen, that's going to look a bit daft, not to mention potentially make it irritating to use. Hence it might be desirable to have a window manager running so you can maximise the window manually. Maybe there's another solution to the problem other than using a window manager, I would be happy to hear of it if someone knows.

Maybe you can use a tiling window manager, instead of a traditional stacking one?

This is a good suggestion, as far as the window manager (WM) angle goes..

Depending on the WM chosen, clients (windows) can be started maximized/fullscreened, and perhaps with or without a border and window title bar, if desired, giving maximum real-estate on the screen. The WM itself is basically transparent, or "not there" for all intents and purposes - all it does is put the clients on the screen.

My own experience with (small/tiling) WM's is limited to "i3" WM only, which would be suitable for these requirements but may not appeal to the OP. There are likely several (at least) other WM's that would also fit this bill and which may be more or less desireable depending on the OP's experience, skill level, desire to fiddle, package manager offerings, and other factors.

Anyhow, good luck with this project!

hey guys,
Sorry its taken so long to follow up on this. I had hand surgery so it has been..eventful. Any way, thanks for the info! I think I may go with suggestions from arizonagroovejet and grapefruti. However, I believe the Nvidia GO card must have gotten to hot at some point in its life. I get the display issues even when i use external monitor. Still go to set it up just to see how it works. Thanks again for all the input.