Hi Geeks,
I am planning to design an embedded device which will have atom processor platform and linux OS in it. It will have an 7" touchscreen panel. In stead of going for KDE and GNOME desktops I want to design my small desktop environment for the device. Can anyone please suggest which GUI tool I should use to design a desktop from scratch?
Why design a desktop from scratch? XFCE is small, pretty quick and ready to install on your device.
I really don't think there is a GUI tool to design a DE from scratch.
If you have a small touchscreen, you should avoid a desktop environment. Because you don't have enough space for window management, and it's really difficult to fit everything in.
Instead, you should start a X server and launch an application with basic shortcuts (understand: big button). You could develop this kind of script with GTK2-perl or PyGTK in one hour.
I would say you should seriously consider android as a pre-built, touch-friendly environment for your device. Yes, it requires a bit of hacking to get running on some random hardware, but it has had a lot of effort put into the UI, and provides a basic (and not so basic) set of pre-built applications for your device.