I'm using the latest version of Raspbian (Jessie lite) and whenever I put in the username and password, the screen goes blank then I'm back at the login. I know I'm typing them in correctly because I get no errors like I do when I type it incorrectly. It did have issues initially downloading the necessary software for the GUI but recommended I try again and append --fix-missing at the end so I did and it seemed to work fine until trying to boot into the gui. Also, power supply is fine. Tried it on a friends pi to make sure.
3 Answers
Jesse Lite does not include the GUI it is just the core OS. Thus when you put in your username and password you get the terminal. This is very useful for headless servers that you can communicate with SSH. Or you can hook a display up to it and use it that way.
Advantages...
Lower performance overhead, and uses less disk space. and if configured correctly you can stick it in a closet and forget about it...
Why would one use this? Example, Well I just finished a project where I put up a security camera (usb) outside, ran the USB cable into my garage, and to a Raspberry Pi, that is connected to my network via WIFI. Also, you could use this for a web server, DNS server and all sorts of things (limited only by your imagination).
Good news though. You have two options, you can download the regular Raspian Jesse, or you can install LXDE.
To install it just type the following command after you log in:
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends xserver-xorg
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends xinit
sudo apt-get install lxde-core lxappearance
sudo apt-get install lightdm
After you install it it may prompt you to reboot your Pi, if it does go ahead.
Log in, then you can run startx
After that you can open Raspi-Config and set it to automatically launch the GUI upon start up if you prefer.
You can read more about the differences here.
What you describe looks like the X server (core component of the GUI) is failing to start. It's hard to know what went wrong with the information you provide. You have two options here:
- start from scratch as Milliways suggested
- investigate what went wrong
The second option is only recommended if you have sufficient skills and you have spent significant time customizing your system so starting from scratch would be too time consuming. In that case, you could start by checking /var/log/Xorg.0.log for error messages and review any files in /etc you have modified, especially GUI-related ones like xorg.conf and lightdm.conf.
answered Sep 22, 2016 at 7:56
If you want a GUI just download normal Jessie and start again.
answered Jul 23, 2016 at 4:19
startxas one word. The GUI should start