Xenial Minimal Install

A. Create the ability to have a GUI

sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -r xenial -t x11

(The above will take a little while)

B. When the above completes, enter your chroot

sudo enter-chroot

Test the install with this command

xinit

A small xterm window will open against a black background. Press ctrl-d to exit

C. Install openbox

sudo apt-get install openbox menu nano

(The above will take a little while)

D. We need to create a few configuration files

nano .Xresources

xterm*font:10x20
xterm*geometry:80x25
xterm*background:black
xterm*foreground:green

nano .xinitrc

xsetroot -solid teal &
xrdb .Xresources &
exec openbox

Test your new GUI with the same command we used before

xinit

You will see a teal-colored background and a cursor. Right-click using the touchpad, then click on the top item, Terminal Emulator. A very nice xterm will open up with easily readable green letters against a black background.

Congratulations! You can now install anything else you wish from the terminal. What follows is merely a suggestion.

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Exit your "desktop" and chroot. Now update your chroot with

sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -n xenial -t keyboard,extension

The above will not add any heavy overhead or space, and will enable url handling, copy & paste, Chromebook keys, etc.

Enter your chroot. Now we will use some "spare parts" from LXDE to create a more usable environment

sudo apt-get install lxsession lxterminal lxsession-edit lxappearance leafpad

After the above, we need to tweak the .xinitrc file so it appears something like this

nano .xinitrc

xrdb .Xresources &
croutonpowerd -i &
syndaemon -i 2 -K -d &
xscreensaver -no-splash &
pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE &
lxpanel --profile LXDE &
lxpanel &
exec openbox

Now is a great time to fix the double-click interval with

nano .gtkrc-2.0.mine and add the code gtk-double-click-time=1000

After all the above, from within the chroot, execute

xinit

You will now see the LXDE menu at the bottom of the page. Click on its start icon (it looks like a grey terminal), choose Preferences, and Customize Look and Feel. Under the widgets tab, change to Clearlooks, and under Icons, choose the Humanity theme, and apply/click . Click on the start icon again, choose Preferences, Desktop Preferences, and choose a background color or image. Under Advanced, click "Show menus provided by window managers" and apply the changes, click OK.

By the way, the wallpapers are located in /usr/share/lxde/wallpapers

At this point, you have a more usable system! You can tweak other settings similar as you would in LXDE, and add other packages, without encountering the errors associated with installing the LXDE "target" from crouton.

To kickstart your session from ChromeOS, from the shell, type the following command

sudo enter-chroot -n xenial -b xinit