Raspberry PI3 – CentOS Armv7hl Gnome Desktop

Home » CentOS » Raspberry PI3 – CentOS Armv7hl Gnome Desktop
CentOS 3 Comments

Maybe there is a better place to post this message but as my question was still CentOS related thought I would start here. Please advise if there is a better forum of which to ask this question.

I am playing around with making a “desktop” workstation out of a Raspberry PI3. I have had no problems installing the OS and pretty much have everything working except a Gnome desktop.

I did:

> yum groupinstall “GNOME Desktop”

and from what I can tell everything necessary is installed. However when I try to start X up I see it try and start, the display blinks as if everything is good and then drops back down to the console. The log file shown below shows a single error ([ 2665.952] (EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering).

[ 2665.710]
X.Org X Server 1.17.2
Release Date: 2015-06-16
[ 2665.725] X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
[ 2665.731] Build Operating System: 4.5.7-fedora-4
[ 2665.736] Current Operating System: Linux CentOS-rpi3 4.4.33-v7.1.el7
#1 SMP Mon Nov 21 18:48:06 UTC 2016 armv7l
[ 2665.736] Kernel command line: 8250.nr_uarts=0 dma.dmachans=0x7f35
bcm2708_fb.fbwidth72 bcm2708_fb.fbheight68
bcm2709.boardrev=0xa22082 bcm2709.serial=0x54bd9ed0
smsc95xx.macaddr

3 thoughts on - Raspberry PI3 – CentOS Armv7hl Gnome Desktop

  • The only real problem I see is here:

    [ 2665.952] (EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering

    It appears that CentOS wants to use hardware acceleration that the Pi can’t do. Video is definitely one of the Pi’s weaker capabilities.

    Compared to the other desktops, GNOME is a resource hog. I’m a MATE guy, so I can’t yet speak to the CentOS ARM build. I do know that the MATE Spin for Fedora 25 ARM installed perfectly on my Raspberry Pi3.

    –Doc Savage
    Fairview Heights, IL

  • I saw that but I didn’t think it was really fatal. I thought it just meant some software emulation was going to be done in place of hardware acceleration. Therefore I thought that maybe the driver to do that did not get installed. Is there an obvious way to try and turn off hardware acceleration?
    Yes I know GNOME is a hog, but was just trying it out. I really want to try out the aarch64 version but not much on the internet as to how to get started (Quick start is coming soon). Would really like to find more definitive instructions for that. Stilll pretty amazing what you can do for about $40.