Twister UI (Twister OS): From Pi to PC

hello and welcome to bite my pie a few videos ago we looked at installing twister os on a raspberry pi since then i've received a couple of inquiries about putting this highly configurable operating system on a desktop pc or laptop and in response to viewer feedback that's precisely what we'll be doing in this video so if this sounds of interest to you stick around installing twister os on a traditional x86 computer is a little different from putting it on a raspberry pi this is because unlike the pi version twister for desktop pcs and laptops is supplied not as an os or operating system but as a ui or user interface this means that we need to install it on top of an existing operating system before any of us go getting carried away we can't do this on top of windows or even mac os come to that instead we need to start with a linux base the reason for this is that unlike the previous two operating systems linux is a lot more configurable and you're not locked into the desktops that microsoft and apple respectively have chosen i don't want to get overly bogged down in the details but to try and give a quick simplified explanation as to how what we're about to do is possible let's think of a linux os as being like a double beef burger on the lowest layer the bottom half of the bread bun we have the linux kernel this is the part of the operating system that communicates directly with the hardware without it nothing else would be possible above this we have the first burger or display server while traditionally this would have been the x window system or x11 as it's more commonly known this is increasingly being replaced by the more modern wayland whichever system is employed this is the part that makes it possible for graphical elements to be drawn on the display the second burger is the window manager there are many of these available open box k win mutter to name a few this section controls the placement and appearance of windows finally we have the top half of the breadboard or the desktop environment as with window managers there are many choices here as well gnome kde xfce the list goes on each of these provides an integrated interface for the system including features such as file managers settings themes built-in apps and multimedia support note that unlike your favorite double burger you can't just pull out and devour the meat leaving the bun behind in a linux based operating system each part cannot function without those beneath it nevertheless as you're hopefully starting to see it's this remarkably interchangeable structure that creates such flexibility within the linux ecosystem it also accounts for much of the divergence that has led to the development of so many distros this level of freedom seldom seen in computer operating systems can be both a blessing and a curse choice is great but too much of it can be confusing especially to those new to the platform anyway i digress if you're watching this video you're most likely hoping to simplify your setup not complicated which is why we're looking to deploy twister os to a desktop pc or laptop to have the same interface that we already enjoy using on our raspberry pi now that we're aware of the basic underpinnings of our setup let's get started open a web browser and search for zubuntu it's this one we're after zubuntu.org from there either click on download or get zubuntu then choose the download mirror that's closest to you for me that's united kingdom then click on the download link which is currently 20.04 as it's a long term support release i'll save that to my computer while that's downloading we'll go and search for another piece of software this one's called etcher and we can grab it from bolina.io i'm going to download the portable version and save that to my computer as well and when you've got both of those you can close your web browser according to the twister ui installation instructions available on twitter os's website you can use either linux mintex fce or zubuntu as the linux based operating system not only are both of these operating systems based on ubuntu but these particular versions also both use the xfce desktop if you watch the previous section of this video hopefully you're starting to see those building blocks we're putting in place ready to add the twisty ui obviously having already downloaded it we'll be using zubuntu in this video the main reason is that this requires a little less configuration than the xfce edition of linux mint okay we're going to need a usb stick for this next part two gigabytes should suffice but more is perfectly fine pop the thumb drive into your computer then locate your download of etcher and launch that click on flash from file and then opens ubuntu hopefully etcher has found your usb stick if not click on change to locate it and from there we're going to click on flash and select yes to proceed this will take a little while so i'll pause the video and come back when it's finished with that done we can close any open windows and remove the usb stick connect it to the computer that you want to install twister os onto then power on the pc we need to boot it from the usb stick and then select tries ubuntu without installing we could have installed the operating system straight away but it's best to check that it works with your hardware first we're currently loaded into what's known as a live environment if you click on the network icon in the top panel you can see if you're currently connected if you intend to use wi-fi instead of a wired connection select your wired network to connect to it now once connected try opening the web browser to test your internet connection finally i'd recommend playing some media content to ensure that audio is working you could even check out bite my pie let's try that one hello and welcome to bite my buy all being well your hardware is compatible and hasn't caused any issues and when you're happy that everything's working it's time to install the os to get started double click on installs ubuntu next make sure your language is selected and click on continue then we need to choose our keyboard layout and click on continue again i have a network cable plugged into my pc but if you're connecting over wi-fi you'll need to complete the additional step shown on screen here you select connect to this network and then click on the name of your wireless network before clicking on continue to save time make sure download updates while installing zubuntu is ticked and i'd also recommend ticking install third-party software to make the os more usable in day-to-day operation then click on continue again here we need to select the type of installation we want to avoid potential issues i'd recommend you dedicate the entire computer to twister os rather than trying to share it with another operating system for this reason i'm going to select erase disk and installs ubuntu and with that done i'll click on continue once more now we need to select the drive we want to install ubuntu onto if your computer only has a single disk it should already be selected as this machine has two i'm going to put it onto the larger and faster 120 gigabyte ssd and then click on install now as this prompt tells us continuing will destroy all of the data on the chosen disk so providing your okay with that click on continue hopefully your region has been automatically detected if not click on the map to select it and then click on continue this is where we set up our system so first enter your name then enter a name for your computer followed by a username and a password for your account for security i'd suggest you leave it on require my password to log in and then click continue the install will take a little while so now would be the perfect opportunity to grab that all-important copy okay once the installation is complete click on restart now and when you get to this prompt remove the usb stick and press enter at the login screen enter the password you set and log in it looks as though it needs to perform an update for my language so i'll click run this action now and then click on install as this is an admin task i need to pop in my password and then click authenticate and with that done i can close those windows great so we now have zubuntu installed before going any further let's first make sure that the operating system is up to date so head for the application menu enter settings and look for software updater and then launch that from there assuming it's found some updates we can click on install now as this is another admin task we need to once again pop in the user account password we created when installing the operating system and then click on authenticate if at any point during the update procedure it asks for your password again simply do as instructed and when your computer is up to date you can click on ok at this point i'd recommend carrying out another restart just to make sure that any updated settings have taken effect before we continue right let's log back in and we now have a functioning and fully up-to-date installation of zubuntu this is an operating system in its own right and you could use it as such but currently it looks nothing like twister os so now that we've done the preparatory work and got everything in place let's install the twister ui to do that we're going to open the application menu and head to internet to launch the web browser from there search for twister os and once you've agreed to google's terms you should find the website behind them let's head to downloads and select the twister ui and we're going to download the 64-bit version and save that to our computer as you can see the download's not going very quickly so rather than keep you hanging around i'll return when it's complete okay once it's finished downloading we can close the web browser before we can run the install script we need to make it executable so double click to open the file manager head into download and right click on the file we just downloaded select properties from the drop-down menu and click on the permissions tab then we need to tick the box that says allow this file to run as a program and then we can close the open windows right installation time open the application menu and then fire up the terminal emulator yes i know it's a big black scary screen but don't panic we only need to enter a couple of basic commands so first type cd which stands for change directory space downloads with a capital d and then press enter you can see that the prompt has changed to reflect that we're now inside the downloads directory the following command is optional but if you type ls and press enter this lists the contents of the directory and here we can see the twister ui file that we just downloaded and then made executable so now it's time to run it and we can do that by typing full stop forward slash twister with a capital t and then rather than typing the whole file name we can press the tab key to auto-complete it and then press enter to run it at this point as instructed we need to press enter to continue your computer also needs to be connected to the internet before proceeding which if you've been following along should already be taken care of so again press enter to continue then we need to type in the password for our account and press enter once more as part of the installation it's going to install the microsoft truetype core font so press the tab key on your keyboard to highlight ok and then press enter to agree to the license and yes we want to do that so tap the tab key to highlight yes and press enter to accept it if you get logged out during the installation process simply log back in and when the install is complete if we click back inside the terminal window we can press enter to restart let's log back into the system and just as twister os is based on raspberry pi os we now have the twister ui running on top of zubuntu the first thing i'd suggest doing is opening twister's application menu and heading into system then launch the twister ui patcher this is just to make sure that the interface is right up to date if there is an update waiting run it from here or otherwise just close out of there next let's sort out the appearance by double clicking on theme twister and then proceed by clicking on next so this in my opinion is one of the best features of twister os from here we can choose the theme for the entire operating system i'm going to go with a light twister 10 but if you prefer something a little more fruit flavored it's got you covered there as well we need to pop in our password and press enter to make the change and then press enter again to restart and if i log back in again now [Music] there we go that's looking a little more like it having covered twister os fairly comprehensively in my video when i installed it on a raspberry pi i'm not going to go over those same topics again but i've put a link in the description if you'd like to check that one out instead during the remainder of this video i'll try to focus on the differences between using twister os on a raspberry pi compared to an x86 pc and look at how we can make the two systems as close as reasonably possible if we take a quick tour around the desktop you'll see some familiar items we have a shortcut to the my android software for connecting your smartphone or tablet there's also a link to steam being on more traditional hardware this should run better than on a raspberry pi there's a shortcut to the luterisk gaming platform and we've already used the theme twister there's also a desktop shortcut to discord chat app in the bottom left corner we have the application menu this is pretty self-explanatory besides delving in here to find programs or shut down the computer you can click on the cog to open system settings there are several familiar looking icons in the bottom panel if you've fully updated your system you may find that the software launcher no longer works this is due to a change in the underlying operating system but never fear it's easily fixed first right click on the old launcher and then select remove confirm that you want to do that and then head for the application menu we need to look in system and then right click on snap store click on add to panel and you should see that a little icon has appeared at the bottom right of the screen while you could leave it there i think it's tidier to move it over so right click once more and this time select move and if we position the cursor on the bottom panel between file manager and the web browser then left click to complete the maneuver and if we click on the new icon we now have access to the new snap store i won't get into the nitty gritty but basically the ubuntu operating system that zubuntu is based on and in turn the twister ui has replaced the previously named software with the snapstore at a technical level this alters things considerably compared to a traditional package manager but to the end user it shouldn't make much of a difference if anything it could be beneficial as newer versions of software may be available sooner than they otherwise might have been this is because snap packages as the programs shipped in this format are known are no longer as tightly knit into the underlying operating system which should make it faster for developers to deliver the latest version of their software at the top left of the screen if we click on the magnifying glass we can do a search for software since we should have a bit more oomph to use the technical term on our desktop pc or laptop than a raspberry pi let's install a video editor i'm going to search for shotcut and you can see that it's actually found two entries this is because one of them is packaged through the distribution whereas the other is a snap package and if we click on them each in turn you can see that this one comes from the ubuntu focal universe repository and is version 20.02.17-2 if we now go and look at the other one this is from snapcraft.io and is version 21.03.21 so as you can see the snap package contains the newer version of the software you could install either of them but i'm going to go with the most up-to-date version and to do that i'll click on install and then pop in my password before we leave the snap store as well as being able to explore the great selection of available software you can view the programs that you already have installed and if you no longer wanted one it's as simple as clicking remove you can also check for any available updates for the selection of programs you're running okay let's close out of there if you've already taken a look around you may have noticed that pi apps and pi kiss are both noticeable by their absence this is because as their names suggest these are platforms for installing applications on a raspberry pi so they're being compatible with our current setup but even if they weren't they'd no longer be necessary anyway with the twister ui sitting on as ubuntu base we now have the vast software catalogue of the ubuntu ecosystem available to us we have a mail launcher on the bottom panel as with twister os on the raspberry pi this also opens the evolution email client however unlike the pi version if thunderbird is more to your liking there's no need to install it here if you head to the application menu you'll find it ready and waiting in the internet section when it comes to office tasks with its writer calc and other applications libreoffice has you covered once more and the mousepad text editor also puts in another appearance then down in the bottom right we have power settings network connections bluetooth volume date and time and last but not least notifications now that we've familiarized ourselves with the layout let's see what we can do about any remaining differences from our twister ui setup compared to that in the twister os video we'll start by adding retropie to do this let's open the terminal we're going to enter five commands the first of which is sudo apt update double doubleland sudo apt upgrade when you've done that press enter type in your password and press enter again when it gets to do you want to continue press enter once more and with the system up to date we can enter the second command which is sudo apt install dash y dialog xml starlet then press enter that's installed the dependencies that retropie requires so now let's grab the software itself and we can do that with git clone dash dash depth equals one https column double forward slash github dot com forward slash retro pi with a capital r and a capital p forward slash retro pi again dash setup with a capital s dot g i t and then we can press enter to execute the command next we need to enter into the github directory that we just cloned as this contains the software to set up retropie so to do that enter cd retro pi with a capital r and a capital p dash set up with a capital s and then press enter you can see that we're now in the directory as the command prompt has changed so all that's left to do is install the software and we can do that by typing sudo dot forward slash retropie underscore setup dot sh and then press enter to begin the install and if it asks for it pop in your password once more when it gets to this notice screen press enter to select ok and we're going to press enter again to carry out the basic install and yes we do want to do that so use your cursor key to highlight yes and press enter to select it depending on the speed of your pc this could take a while so i'll pause the video and come back when it's complete yes that was a pretty substantial installation it certainly kept the admittedly somewhat asthmatic celeron chip on this little pc busy for the better part of the last hour when it eventually returns to this menu screen we can perform a reboot and yes we do want to do that once you've logged back in you can find retropie in the games section of the application menu having took the time to install it it may be worthwhile creating a desktop shortcut you'll find the all important rom folders in the retropie folder inside your home directory and we can begin our journey into old school gaming with a simple double click on a raspberry pi we have the twister os web apps although these aren't included in the twister ui that doesn't mean we can't create our own to do this let's first install the epiphany web browser so open the terminal and type sudo apt update press enter and pop in your password this will ensure that we get the latest version of the software when that's done type sudo apt install epiphany dash browser then press enter once more and press it again to continue with the installation complete we can close the terminal and if we head to the internet section of the application menu we can launch the new web browser you probably don't want this to be your default web browser so click on no what we're going to do is turn a website into a web app let's use youtube as an example we'll search for it in the top bar and then click on the website you don't need to sign in unless you want to once the web page is loaded click on the hamburger menu at the top of the browser and select install site as web application we'll keep the default name of youtube.com and then click on create then let's close the browser if we return to the application menu you'll see that we now have this new entry for other and in there is our new youtube web app i'm going to put a shortcut on the desktop and then launch it from there let's agree to youtube's terms and now we have a youtube web app obviously you can use this same procedure to create multiple apps if you later decide you want to remove any of them return to the epiphany web browser click on the hamburger menu and open the application manager so at the moment i've only got the one entry but if i no longer wanted it i could click on delete but since i don't want to do that i'm going to close out of there if you saw my twister os video on the raspberry pi you may recall that we installed zoom so let's do that here as well this time we're going to open the web browser as this is the first time opening google chrome we need to choose our preferences so i'm going to leave that box ticked but untick sending usage statistics and then click on ok right we're going to do a search for zoom and agree to google's terms then click on zoom's website you've got to of cookies so let's agree to those as well and close out of there hover over resources and click on download zoom client we're going to set the linux type to ubuntu then make sure that that's 64-bit and that the version is set to 1604 or newer and then click on download if you get a warning message about the file don't worry that's perfectly fine so choose keep to dismiss it then as instructed we can click on the downloaded package to install it and click install in the new window that opens and you'll need to pop in your password to proceed okay once it's finished close any open windows and if we head to the application menu we should now have zoom ready to run while i didn't cover it in my raspberry pi video twister os has a great little program called bookshelf this contains some excellent publications direct from the raspberry pi foundation all supplied completely for free although it isn't installed as part of the twisty ui there's nothing to stop us adding it ourselves so to do this open the web browser and navigate to archive.raspberrypi.org click on the debian link then on pull next select main and then the letter r from here we need to click on rp bookshelf and we're looking for the latest version of the rp-bookshelf amd64.deb file which at the time of this recording is this one here so let's click on that to download it and since we know this is coming from a reputable source we need to click on keep with that done we can close the web browser and then open the file manager to find the file that we just downloaded and there it is next we're going to right click inside the downloads directory and select open terminal here you can see from the prompt that the terminal is indeed open inside the downloads folder and if we enter ls we can also view the content okay to install bookshelf we need to enter sudo dpkg dash i rp dash bookshelf and then if you press the tab key it should complete the rest of the command and then we can press enter if prompted pop in your password when it's finished you can close any open windows and if you head to the applications menu you should find bookshelf located within other so you can see we've got the official raspberry pi magazine there's also other publications within the different tabs note that none of them have been downloaded to our computer yet that's how the program was able to install so quickly but if there's a title you like the look of simply double click on it and once the download completes you can have a good old read when it comes to watching subscription services like amazon prime video on netflix previously in twitter os we needed to use the media edition of the chromium web browser fortunately even on the raspberry pi this is no longer the case as chromium now has wide vine support nor do we need to take any additional steps in the twisty ui we can simply watch our favorite content using google chrome before wrapping up this video i'd like to mention workspaces although these were omitted from my twitter os pi video they are available in that version as well if you're not familiar with workspaces they can be very useful but rather than try to explain what they are it's probably easier to demonstrate from the application menu let's open the settings manager and from there select workspaces at the moment you can see that we only have the one workspace but let's click on the plus sign to increase that to two and then we can close the window next let's right-click on the bottom panel then hover over the panel entry and choose add new items scroll down to the bottom of the list and click on workspace switcher and once it's highlighted click on add then we can close the window we now have this new area at the bottom right of the screen and hovering the mouse pointer over it shows us the current workspace is workspace one but we also have a workspace too clicking on this at the moment doesn't actually seem to do much although you can now see that my current workspace is workspace too to show what this is actually doing we need to open a couple of programs so keeping in workspace 2 i'm going to open libreoffice writer and now you can see that its icon has appeared in workspace 2. if i then click in workspace 1 it appears as though libreoffice is completely vanished don't panic we'll return to it in a moment but here in workspace 1 let's open the web browser and this is the real magic of workspaces because if i now click back on workspace 2 there's my open libreoffice writer and returning to workspace 1 there's the open google chrome so by using these workspaces we can have multiple programs open at the same time and easily flick between them you can even click and drag a program into a different workspace so if i now switch to workspace 2 and rearrange the windows you can see that i've got both libreoffice writer and google chrome both in the same workspace by the way you can do the same thing by grabbing a program's window and dragging it across into an adjoining workspace but what if you decide that workspaces aren't for you well that's easy enough head back to workspace 1 and then right click on the panel from there select remove and click on remove to confirm then all that's left to do is head back into the settings manager select workspaces and click the minus sign to change it back to one then we can close out of there and that brings us to the end of this video thanks to the good folks at pi labs in the shape of twister os and twister ui we can now put this great software on both our raspberry pi's and more traditional x86 computers respectively and with the help of my previous twister os video and now this twister ui one i hope you feel better prepared to do so if you do end up running the software on both pi and pc let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you have a particular preference between the two as always if you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe and if you'd like to be notified when i post the next one just click the bell icon thanks for watching and until next time take care [Music] you

Channel: Byte My Pi

Views: 11,312

Keywords: twister ui, twister os, x86, pc, xubuntu, twister 10, linux, workspaces, themetwister, snap store, snap package, pi labs

Id: uxRmp7kiL_c

Length: 34min 29sec (2069 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021