Overview

PiCute is a Raspbian based OS for the RaspberryPI running the amazing QT5.4 graphical framework.

The underlying OS is based on pipaOS XGUI version. This means you can run QT5 apps on the XServer and EGLFS.

PiCute is written for developers and testers, and there are two versions available: developer and runtime.

Features

OpenGL ES 2.0
Linux framebuffer backend
Xserver with Fluxbox
Support for Gif, Jpeg and Png formats
QT5 networking with SSL support
SQLite plugin enabled
xkbcommon enabled, allows intermixed HID support on the Xserver
Runs on RaspberryPI models B and 2 (and probably model A too)
developer version includes most QT5 official examples compiled along with their source code
developer version includes QTCreator v3.4.0

Download and burn the developer image on a SD card and boot it on the RaspberryPI.

At the login prompt enter sysop and posys for the password.

You should land into the Linux shell, at which point you can either run EGLFS apps directly, or start the X server to have a more friendly GUI.

$ startx

Right click on the desktop, and fire up the LXTerminal from the applications menu, then you can test the many QT5 examples available.

$ cd /usr/local/picute/v5.4.1/examples
$ ./opengl/hellogl2/hellogl2

Enjoy quint by quickly building it yourself

$ git clone https://github.com/skarbat/quint.git
$ cd quint
$ /usr/local/pictue/v5.4.1/bin/qmake && make
$ ./quint

All apps built on the developer version should run on the runtime image straight away.

You can also start QTCreator from an LXTerminal inside Fluxbox:

$ qtcreator -platform xcb -noload Welcome

You will need to manually create a Kit. Qmake lives at /usr/local/picute/v5.4.1/bin.

Then you are ready to build apps and push them to a second networked RaspberryPI unit, running PiCute runtime version.

Some of the many QT5 example apps available on PiCute developer version...

HelloGL2 example shows OpenGLES inside EGLFS

Quint running on PiCute on the EGLFS backend

Flickr app on top of PiCute's Fluxbox

Widget animated tiles, moving on the X Server too

Beautiful particle affectors on qmlviewer

Example of particle emitters running standalone

CustomParticle, GLSL code on the GPU chip

tvtennis.qml - simple as 50 QML lines of code

Desktop widgets screenshot and systray on Fluxbox

Widgets, Dialogs and Wizards playing nicely on Fluxbox

Animating effects for graphic elements inside Fluxbox

Note that currently the runtime version does not have any QT5 apps to play with

The runtime-libs compressed file allows to install the runtime libraries on your preferred distribution.

You might need to change your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, or /etc/ld.preload settings.

Debian Wheezy packages are provided to make installation painless on other RaspberryPI distros.

Point your apt sources to deb http://archive.mitako.eu wheezy main, and then execute as root:

$ curl http://archive.mitako.eu/archive-mitako.gpg.key | apt-key add -

$ apt-get install picute-qt5

If you want to build QT5 apps you'll also need to install picute-qt5-dev.

The source code is available on Github

You can reach me at albert at mitako dot eu.

Ask questions on the Picute forum