Xserver Xorg, Raspbian lite, and the blackbox desktop environment
When setting up a Rasbian Linux OS, now known as Raspberry PI OS lite clean install, the main reason for doing so is that I might just want to set up a server and not much of anything else. There are maybe some additional reasons why though such as just learning how to work with a Linux system from the command line only, as a lite install of Raspberry PI OS will just be that alone, at least for starters anyway. As such I might not always want, or even need any kind of desktop environment when it comes to this kind of striped now command line only image of the OS.
However often I might want at least some kind of desktop environment if I am still going to have the raspberry pi hooked up to a monitor and not go fully headless. When it comes to that, it might still be best to go with a desktop image rater than the lite version as doing so will make life a little easier. However in some cases I might want to experiment with some desktop environment other than the default LXDE based environment that comes with the desktop version, and not have any additional bloat that I do not want on the OS image. In which case I might want to start out by just installing just the X Window System, and then choose a desktop environment that is very striped down with just the core set of features that I really need.
So In this post I will be going over installing the x window system, and setting up a very simple desktop for X called blackbox in Raspberry PI OS lite. I am not going to actually recommend blackbox as a desktop environment actually, it is generally a good idea to look into other options. However blackbox just happens to be a very light weight desktop environment that I have been aware of for a long time, at it seems like it is still available in many repositories.
1 - Start with a clean Raspbian lite Image
the first step is to start with a clean Raspbian lite image to run on the raspberry pi. I will not be getting into that here because I wrote a post on getting started with Raspbian lite before hand. If you have a desktop image there is no need to read this post because you have xorg installed all ready. However at that point you might be interested in installing another desktop environment, in that case it might make sense to read this post because I will be getting into setting up blackbox desktop. So then it would only make sense to continue reading if you want to just for the heck of it, or to catch something else in this post that might be of interest to a problem of some kind.
2 - install xserver-xorg
The first package I would start with is xserver-xorg, This will just install the xserver itself, and not a whole bunch of other stuff that I might not use which would be the case if I where to install the xorg package.
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3 - install xinit
I will want to install the xinit package so that I can start the xserver. This package will give me commands like startx, and xinit.
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4 - install x11-xserver-utils
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6 - install blackbox, xterm, and lightDM
Now to install a desktop environment, in this post I will be going over blackbox, but if you want to use a different desktop the setup, and additional packages to install might be different. I like blackbox because it is a very clean, minimum environment that I have been using once and a while for years off an on. However it would seem that it is not supported any more, so feel free to look into what the many other options are beyond just that of black box.
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6.1 - blackbox first start
Once blackbox is installed I can then start it by just calling startx.
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6.2 - lightDM
If I want to rRaspbian to boot right into a display manager, and then from there start blackbox. Or If I want to install more than one desktop environment, I will want to install a display manager. One solution for this world be lightDm. There are other options when it comes to display managers, and there is of course just using startx and xinit to start and desktop from the command line once I am logged in. So this like many things when starting with a Raspbian lite install is totally optional.
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7 - Conclusion
So starting with a lite distribution of Raspbian is often good starting point for certain use cases of a raspberry PI. If I want to set up a raspberry PI to just act as a sever of something on a network then it makes sense to just have a command line interface to work with, just install the application that I want it to run, and not bother installing a desktop environment at all. However in some situations I might want to install xorg, and a custom desktop environment.