I am not a Developer, But am trying to build my own OpenWrt Image with a desktop environment for x86_64 hardware. I can't seem to get instructions on how to do this. All the Feeds do not have the desktop environment XFCE.
Could someone please send me the source or feeds list that is up to date to get XFCE installed. All the Feeds i have tried do not have the XFCE packages in them. I have tried over and over again to get instructions from AI but everything seems not to work.
I am using Debian 13 as my build environment. I bought a PC just to do this specifically.
I also tried to install a desktop environment from within openwrt and i could not get any of the packages for XFCE to install as well.
Thanks in advanced
Building OpenWrt from source is easy, the wiki will tell you how.
However, OpenWrt is not a desktop OS. There is no KDE, GNOME, XFCE, lxqt, lxde, cinnamon, mate, CDE, etc. While nothing is totally impossible, the gaps you'd have to fill are massive - and it doesn't make the slightest sense to even think about it.
If you want a desktop, arch, debian, fedora, gentoo, Mageia/ Mandriva, SuSE, Ubuntu, … or even alpine are just at your fingertips, OpenWrt is not - and doesn't intend to be either. It's way easier to configure nftables on a general purpose linux distribution, than to package up (and maintain!) all the little nitbits that would be required for a desktop on OpenWrt (and a total security nightmare), by several orders of magnitude.
If you want a vnc desktop to run on OpenWrt, that is very easy to setup with lxc on the OW device. You would install a desktop distro therein such as Arch with your DE of choice. I do this with tigervnc and Arch on my OW router/firewall.
Just in general, your router is your border gateway - security should be paramount. One key ingredient is being selective and very careful about what's running on the router - and less is more. A router is a router, is a router, is a router-only - not a gaming rig, not your porn surfing station.
Thanks for your reply,
I didn't know the Desktop Environment would be such a challenge to get working. The instructions i got from lame AI told me it would be fairly simple lol.
I have to ask the question, What would be the point of a Powerful x86_64 Router Mini PC, if not to run some type of desktop GUI, you know what i mean.
I already bought a pretty pricey piece of hardware to do this. I spent close to 800$ on the mini router pc or something like that. So i am invested to this project a little bit. (To be honest i over payed for this little thing lol, it only has a intel celeron...)
I am determined to get some type of Desktop running along side OpenWrt. I like what darksky said, that seems to be close to what i want to do.
Now we are talking, I would like to get something like what your are describing working. From what i understand, you are saying i can containerize the entire OS along side OpenWrt?
Quite frankly, unless we're talking about an x86_64 system with 10 GBit/s network cards, you've paid at least three times (almost four times before SSD/ RAM prices went crazy) more than sensible.
You should really reconsider what you actually want to achieve, what your priorities are. A lot of things are possible (a desktop environment is not), but very few things are sensible. The more you want to run on your router (virtualization/ containerization), the more complex it gets and the more problems you get with getting it running and secure. An advanced user ~= 'specialist' would be able to get a lot of this working (sans GUI), but at the same time they'd be less likely to even try (because this isn't a good idea).
If you run OpenWrt on your typical plastic router or x86_64 doesn't make that much of a difference, the behaviour is (mostly) the same - the performance/ capabilities/ hardware limitations differ. But keep in mind, a router typically has to run 24/7, 365 days a year, it just needs to work - monitor/ keyboard/ mouse aren't useful for that (initial setup/ debugging are another topic, for that these are handy, but not for daily usage) and just waste electricity.
Especially is you are a beginner, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle is important - one cable in (wan), one (or more) cable(s) out (LAN), the router only takes care of services directly related to you network (NAT, stateful firewall, routing, DHCP/ DNS, things like ad-filtering, DoH/ DoT and VPN can be very useful addons). It is tempting to put the unused CPU cycles, SSD space, RAM to 'seemingly good use', but that's a difficult path to certain doom - it does get exponentially more complex, keeping it secure is not trivial and when things go pear shaped (it will, and be it just the proverbial excavator taking out your internet connection for a few hours - or simple hardware failure), it becomes increasingly difficult to re-bootstrap your network.
The mods say this is inadvisable, and they are right.
But you're a big boy, you want to tinker, and as long as you understand you are most likely to blow up your home network at least several times doing this, there are reasonably sane and secure ways to run a desktop os on your x86 router.
The most practical way is install proxmox and run openwrt as a VM. If this is all new to you, expect a steep learning curve.
On the bright side, many people have done this, and all the resources are a google search away. Here's one: