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Neil Bothwick knows more about Linux than you. Probably!

An AppImage file is the easiest way to try new software on your computer. You download it, run it and can delete it if you don’t want it.

Q Deskreen discombobulation

I was hoping to try Deskreen (LXF278) with my Pi400, so that I can use an older computer as a display. It didn’t work for me at all. I did find the support pages of Deskreen’s GitHub at https://github.com/pavlobu/deskreen/issues/59 so confusing that I gave up! Can you advise how I can get this to work?

Thomas Rasche

A I’ll start with a disclaimer: I don’t have access to a Pi400 so this was done on a plain old Pi 4. You don’t say which OS you have on the Pi, so I’ll assume it is the standard Raspberry Pi OS, the OS formerly known as Raspbian. The GitHub page you refer to is basically a discussion between people who have already got it working rather than a set of instructions for those who haven’t, but near the bottom of the page there is a link to an AppImage build for the Raspberry Pi.

An AppImage is an all-in-one software bundle; all dependencies and the executables should be contained in the one file, which you simply run. It is not the most efficient way of running software – the bundle probably contains duplicates of software you already have on your system – but it is a quick and easy way of using it. The AppImage on the main Deskreen site is for x86 processors; make sure you get the Arm one from the GitHub link. Download it to your home directory and make it executable, either by right-clicking in the file manager, or by using chmod in a terminal: $ chmod +x Deskreen-1.0.1-armv7l. AppImage

This has to be done only once, then you can run it from a terminal any time you want with: $ ./Deskreen-1.0.1-armv7l.AppImage

You can also run it from the file manager with a double-click.

Q Read-only USB

I’d like to know a procedure in order to create a ‘read-only’ USB drive to be used with Debian, Ubuntu or Arch-based distros. I’d like to be able to reverse the procedure to restore the default read-write setting, as well. Does something similar to Diskpart exist under the hood in Linux in order to create read-only USB drives?