You have a Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS(Raspberry Pi OS), which used to be called Raspbian, and you surely know that it is a fantastic small computer with a great operating system that includes everything a beginner might want. However, once you are familiar with it and want to do other things, you might not want that default operating system that includes all components.

In this case, you have two options: either you can painstakingly remove everything you don’t need, or you can build a lightweight operating system tailored to your needs using Raspberry Pi OS Lite(Raspberry Pi OS Lite). My suggestion is to go with the second option; it’s both simple and time-saving.

Raspberry Pi OS Lite

The “Lite(Lite)” version of Raspberry Pi OS(Raspberry Pi OS) is nothing special; it is just a minimized image based on the latest version of Debian. This image only contains the core of the operating system and boots to the command line without entering the graphical desktop. You can use this as the foundation for your customized Raspberry Pi system. Everything else is built on top of this core.

Go to the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s website to download this lightweight image. After downloading, check the detailed installation guide that explains how to burn the Raspberry Pi operating system onto an SD card under Linux, Windows, or macOS.

If you plan to use the Raspberry Pi as a minimalist system to run some scripts and services, this is about enough. If you want to do more, keep reading.

X Window

First, if you occasionally need to connect to your Raspberry Pi via a graphical user interface (GUI), installing a window system is a good idea.

The X Window system, sometimes referred to as X11, is a common basic window system on Unix operating systems. X11 provides the basic framework for a GUI desktop environment. It allows you to interact with the computer through windows, a mouse, and a keyboard.

Installing X Window

The following command installs the minimum packages required for X11 to run.

sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg xfonts-base xinit

By using --no-install-recommends, only the main dependencies (the packages in the Depends field) are installed. This saves a lot of space since packages that are suggested but not necessarily needed are not installed.

Advanced: Using Xfce Desktop Environment

If you want, you can stop here and start using X Window as your desktop. However, I do not recommend this. The minimal window management tools that come with X Window are minimalist and can feel outdated to some extent. Instead, I recommend installing a modern desktop environment like Xfce, GNOME, or KDE. When used on a microcomputer, I prefer Xfce over the others because it is designed for resource-limited systems, and you can customize it with themes, icons, or other things.

Installing Xfce

Installing the Xfce desktop environment is quite simple. Just:

sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends xfce4 desktop-base lightdm

That’s it. You have now installed X Window (X11) and Xfce. Now it’s time to customize the environment and install some core applications.

Core Applications

So far, you have installed X Window (X11), the Xfce desktop environment, and LightDM (a display manager that comes with Xfce). Now you have a lightweight, fully functional system that you can start and use. However, before finishing, I prefer to install some core applications.

The following command installs a terminal program, Audacious audio player, Ristretto image browser, Mousepad text editor, File Roller archive manager, and Thunar file manager.

sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends xfce4-terminal audacious ristretto
sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends mousepad file-roller thunar-volman

Other Optional Items

Other things you might want to install include a good network manager, task manager, PDF reader, notification tool, desktop background manager, screenshot tool, and some new icon and cursor themes. In short, if the Raspberry Pi is your primary system, these are some supplements for daily work.

sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends network-manager xfce4-taskmanager xfce4-notifyd
sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends xpdf gnome-icon-theme dmz-cursor-theme

What to Do Next?

If everything is working well, you now have a Raspberry Pi based on Xfce and Debian Lite, a super lightweight operating system. I recommend you check out other cool things on the Xfce website that you can install and use. What to do next is entirely up to you!

via: https://opensource.com/article/20/6/custom-raspberry-pi

Author: Patrick H. Mullins Topic: lujun9972 Translator: Yufei-Yan Proofreader: wxy

This article is originally compiled by LCTT and presented by Linux China.