How to activate the graphical inteface on a Orange Pi Lite board

[Tiziano]

Goodmorning, I'm Tiziano from Italy.

I would like to manage all the delicate functions of my reef aquarium through an Orange Pi Lite card.

I saw that both the Armbian Buster program and the Armbian Focal program are available for my card, I kindly ask you to understand if there is a fundamental difference between the two and which.

I have tried successfully in any case to install and run both programs on the microSD and to start the two programs. The card starts up and the whole procedure is performed correctly. The problem is that in the end I am only asked to choose the "default system command shell" between "bash" and "zsh", no option to start a desktop type LXDE or similar instead.

For the use I intend to make of the card, as mentioned, to manage a reef aquarium, the graphic interface is fundamental for me.

Is the GUI function already present in the distro or does it have to be loaded separately?

Can you kindly give me some indication on how to charge/activate the graphical interface?

Thank you

[Werner]

Moved to Common issues / peer to peer technical support

[Werner]

37 minutes ago, Tiziano said:

I saw that both the Armbian Buster program and the Armbian Focal program are available for my card, I kindly ask you to understand if there is a fundamental difference between the two and which.

Google for Debian Buster and Ubuntu Focal and then make your choice which userspace you prefer.

 

37 minutes ago, Tiziano said:

no option to start a desktop type LXDE or similar instead.

Either download a "desktop" image if available or install via armbian-config or per apt. There are tons of tutorials in the web how to install a desktop environ within Ubuntu or Debian.