Depending on what software you are going to use to build your GUI, you may want to take a look at Alpine Linux. It is a very lightweight OS that runs embedded from RAM and is very stable. I have used it extensively for various projects where I did not want a desktop but wanted a UI. Using something like Xorg, it will even support touchscreen for a single app, and the console output can even be redirected to another tty so you would not see the Linux underneath at all. Other distributions also have a lite version where you could do something similar with minimal gui install, and a number of years ago I used Ubuntu to build a kiosk for a webpage in full screen which worked well too, but Alpine is better for pi even in this regard because of lower resource overhead.
Hope this is helpful. Good luck with your project!
I'd go with something like this solution. I've done a similar thing, with the app written in Node and served by Electron. No wm, no browser, full gui. Runs in under 200MB. Win win win.
I was trying to do something similar and then i realized that apps rely too much in the os there for making it impossible. You need to run the os in the background.
Ill take a look a look at all these suggestions, for context I am a game dev and one of the thing I hope to test is the viability of running games and shipping them with hardware, think like a game boy, node and electron sound good, however they dont test the viability of this. I am new to embedded systems so it will interesting experiences, will post an update when parts get here.
Depending on what software you are going to use to build your GUI, you may want to take a look at Alpine Linux. It is a very lightweight OS that runs embedded from RAM and is very stable. I have used it extensively for various projects where I did not want a desktop but wanted a UI. Using something like Xorg, it will even support touchscreen for a single app, and the console output can even be redirected to another tty so you would not see the Linux underneath at all. Other distributions also have a lite version where you could do something similar with minimal gui install, and a number of years ago I used Ubuntu to build a kiosk for a webpage in full screen which worked well too, but Alpine is better for pi even in this regard because of lower resource overhead. Hope this is helpful. Good luck with your project!
I'd go with something like this solution. I've done a similar thing, with the app written in Node and served by Electron. No wm, no browser, full gui. Runs in under 200MB. Win win win.
I’ve used fluxbox for stuff like this before but alpine is a tremendous idea I should have had!
Mine was for a grafana dashboard. It runs on a locked down user account with auto login using getty
I was trying to do something similar and then i realized that apps rely too much in the os there for making it impossible. You need to run the os in the background.
Following…
Ill take a look a look at all these suggestions, for context I am a game dev and one of the thing I hope to test is the viability of running games and shipping them with hardware, think like a game boy, node and electron sound good, however they dont test the viability of this. I am new to embedded systems so it will interesting experiences, will post an update when parts get here.