[Motorola Photon 4G] larrybiggs:
I'm hoping this is the right place for this post, if not just move it or nuke it, whatever works.

I've cobbled togther what I did to take my stock Photon and turn it into a fire breathing dragon, or well at least a fully functional netbook equivalent with openoffice, gimp, local network based printing etc. This works for both the HDMI dock as well as a converted refurbished Atrix dock. You can even change your screen resolution to match your monitor capability on the HDMI dock. I would assume this would work with both the little mini dock thing as well as the non-HDMI dock changes that let you use a monitor directly without the dock, however these are untested.

This assumes you have a fast microsd card installed in the Photon and are willing to wipe it and let webtop2sd erase and format it. Back up your data on the sdcard before starting down this path.

I wasn't ambitious enough to go down the full updated bootloader cwm path, instead I stayed with rooted stock and slowly built up what I needed. Hopefully this helps someone out there trying to do the same thing. The side benefit is that you keep your 4G and can install updates down the road (assuming you don't lose root).

Credit goes to those very smart folks out there that figured all this out, I just bolted the steps together for my needs. I've included a reference link for each major step. This isn't intended as a step by step guide, more like the links I found and followed with hints tossed in along the way.

To root, – use torpedo, it worked for me even after the most recent OTA update.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1216131

Next, install webtop2sd, format the card and copy the existing instance to your sdcard, enable the various advanced things, read through the process. Major kudos for this app and the time and thought that went into it, amazing stuff.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1119555

(for photon you need to download webtop2sd-2.0.1.apk - [Click for QR Code] )

once booted into the sdcard side, launch webtop configurator and let it update the files and then install lxterminal and the other application, you need to pay attention to the color of the buttons to know if it has installed. If the webtop configurator won't launch, follow the steps in the above link to figure out if you are actually running from the sdcard or not.

once you install, go back into the webtop configurator and install them both again if they didn't actually install, for me it acted like it installed but really didn't, took me a couple times.

This next part is the key to stability, an amazing feat of scripting to fix all the package dependencies and then build placeholder packages for the missing bits, and then locking (“hold”) for the motorola provided packages so they don't get messed up further down the road. Doffing my cap to you sir.

run the apt-get package script fixer, say yes to everything and it will sort it all out for you, it runs for a long time, just leave it alone and answer the questions when prompted

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=16131577

Install a different desktop interface if you want. I used xfce4 to give me a real “start” menu with all the expected things. At this point you are using the synaptic package manager to install applications.

(from an lxterminal window) type in “gksu synaptic”

install xfce4

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1054213&page=2

Assuming you don't want AWN to load at startup, then edit the file that controls what launches at startup. Using leafpad you can edit the file to have the menus you want for your setup.

cd /osh/usr/local/bin/

sudo leafpad start-oshwt-2.sh

The section needs to look like the below, comment or uncomment (the # at the beginning of the line) to omit or include what you want. I opted for the webtop-panel at the top of the screen along with the xfce4-panel at the bottom of the screen along with xfdesktop for the desktop background and associated right-click menus.

# start OSHWT 2 scripts

sfalv -i "xfce4-panel"

sfalv -i "xfdesktop"

#sfalv -i "awn-autostart"

sfalv -i "webtop-panel"

#sfalv -i "webtop-wallpaper"

sfalv -i "evbridge"

sfalv -i "window_switcher"

sr-test avahi_start &

reboot the phone for the updated menus

At this point you can start installing packages – I opted for openoffice and gimp as well as the chm viewer to read chm formatted help files.

From a lxterminal window enter “gksu synaptic” and choose openoffice and whatever else you need.

install openoffice

install gimp

install chm viewer

let things run to completion.

At this point you are getting close to complete but might want better control of your monitor resolution. To fix the screensize issue on different monitors on the hdmi dock, you need to edit the xorg.conf file

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1198230

cd /osh/etc/X11

sudo leafpad xorg.conf

Do a search on “Screen HDMI” and then change the “1366 768” to “1920 1080”:

Section "Screen"

Identifier	"Screen HDMI"

Device	"Tegra HDMI"

Monitor	"HDMI"

Option "ARGBHWCursor" "false"

DefaultDepth 24

SubSection "Display"

Depth	24

# Uncomment to override the preferred resolution chosen by UseEDIDModes

Modes	"1280x720"

ViewPort	0 0

# Defaults to the size of the chosen mode

Virtual	1920 1080

EndSubsection

then from a lxterminal window type

xrandr -s 1920x1080

undock and reboot the phone

You can select the desired screen resolution from the xfce4 “monitor settings” app, not from the webtop display app (or at least not on mine).

Hopefully this helps someone and minimizes the amount of googling and reading to get what you need.

Many thanks to the all the smart folks on XDA – you are the best!