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-The Linux XFree86 HOWTO
-!!!The Linux XFree86 HOWTO
-!Eric Steven Raymond Thyrsus Enterprises
-
- esr@thyrsus.com
-
-
-
-
-Copyright (c) 2000 by Eric S. Raymond
-
-
-
-$Date: 2001/09/09 08:29:29 $
-
-
-__Revision History__Revision 7.22001-09-09Revised by: esrXFree86 site has changed directory structure.Revision 7.12001-08-09Revised by: esrConfiguration has changed, and is now much simpler.Revision 7.02000-08-21Revised by: esrFirst !DocBook version.
-
-
-
-
-
-This document describes how to obtain, install, and configure
-version 4.1.0 of the XFree86 version of the X Window System (X11R6)
-for Linux systems. It is a step-by-step guide to configuring
-XFree86 on your system.
-
-
-
-
-
-----; __Table of Contents__; 1. Introduction: ; 1.1. Other sources of information; 1.2. New versions of this document; 1.3. Feedback and Corrections; 2. Hardware requirements; 3. Installing XFree86; 4. Configuring XFree86: ; 4.1. Normal Configuration; 5. Running XFree86; 6. Translations----
-!!!1. Introduction
-
-The X Window System is a large and powerful (some might say
-excessively large and overly complex) graphics environment for UNIX
-systems. The original X Window System code was developed at MIT; commercial
-vendors have since made X the industry standard for UNIX
-platforms. Virtually every UNIX workstation in the world runs some variant
-of the X Window system.
-
-
-
-A freely redistributable port of the MIT X Window System version 11,
-release 6 (X11R6) for 80386/80486/Pentium UNIX systems has been developed
-by a team of programmers originally headed by David Wexelblat
-`dwex@XFree86.orgb. The release, known as XFree86, is
-available for System V/386, 386BSD, and other x86 UNIX implementations,
-including Linux. It includes all of the required binaries, support files,
-libraries, and tools.
-
-
-
-Complete information on XFree86 is available at the XFree86 web site,
-http://www.XFree86.org.
-
-
-
-In this document, we'll give a step-by-step description of how
-to install and configure XFree86 for Linux, but you will have to
-fill in some of the details yourself by reading the documentation
-released with XFree86 itself. (This documentation is discussed below.)
-However, using and customizing the X Window System is far beyond the
-scope of this document---for this purpose you should obtain one of the
-many good books on using the X Window System.
-
-----
-!!1.1. Other sources of information
-
-If you have never heard of Linux before, there are several sources of
-basic information about the system. The best place to find these is at the
-Linux Documentation Project home
-page. You can find the latest, up-to-date version of this document
-there, as http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/XFree86-HOWTO.html.
-
-----
-!!1.2. New versions of this document
-
-New versions of the Linux XFree86 HOWTO will be periodically posted
-to comp.os.linux.help and
-comp.os.linux.announce and
-news.answers. They will also be
-uploaded to various Linux WWW and FTP sites, including the LDP home
-page.
-
-
-
-You can always view the latest version of this on the World Wide Web
-via the URL http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO//XFree86-HOWTO.html.
-
-
-
-This document was originally written by Matt Welsh in the dim and
-backward abysm of time. Thanks, Matt!
-
-----
-!!1.3. Feedback and Corrections
-
-If you have questions or comments about this document, please feel
-free to mail Eric S. Raymond, at `esr@thyrsus.comb. I welcome
-any suggestions or criticisms. If you find a mistake with this document,
-please let me know so I can correct it in the next version. Thanks.
-
-
-
-Please do ''not'' mail me questions about how to
-make your video card and monitor work with X. This HOWTO is intended to be
-a rapid, painless guide to ''normal'' installation using
-the new interactive configurator. If you run into problems, browse the
-XFree86
-Video Timings HOWTO. (This is the up-to-date HTML version of
-XFree86's `Videomodes.doc' file.) That document tells everything I know
-about configuration troubleshooting. If it can't help you, I can't
-either.
-
-----
-!!!2. Hardware requirements
-
-You can find an up-to-date list of supported cards and chipset types
-at the 4.1.0 status page.
-
-
-
-The documentation included with your video adaptor should specify the
-chipset used. If you are in the market for a new video card, or are
-buying a new machine that comes with a video card, have the vendor
-find out exactly what the make, model, and chipset of the video card
-is. This may require the vendor to call technical support on your
-behalf; in general vendors will be happy to do this. Many PC hardware
-vendors will state that the video card is a ``standard SVGA card''
-which ``should work'' on your system. Explain that your software
-(mention Linux and XFree86!) does not support all video chipsets and
-that you must have detailed information.
-
-
-
-You can also determine your videocard chipset by running the
-__!SuperProbe__ program included with the XFree86 distribution.
-This is covered in more detail below.
-
-
-
-Supported video cards will work with all bus types, including ISA and
-VLB and PCI.
-
-
-
-One problem faced by the XFree86 developers is that some video card
-manufacturers use non-standard mechanisms for determining clock
-frequencies used to drive the card. Some of these manufacturers either
-don't release specifications describing how to program the card, or
-they require developers to sign a non-disclosure statement to obtain
-the information. This would obviously restrict the free distribution
-of the XFree86 software, something that the XFree86 development team
-is not willing to do. For a long time, this has been a problem with
-certain video cards manufactured by Diamond, but as of release 3.1 of
-XFree86, Diamond has started to work with the development team to
-release free drivers for these cards.
-
-
-
-The suggested setup for XFree86 under Linux is a 486 or better with at
-least 8 megabytes of RAM, and a video card with a chipset listed
-above. For optimal performance, we suggest using an accelerated card,
-such as an S3-chipset card. You should check the documentation for
-XFree86 and verify that your particular card is supported before
-taking the plunge and purchasing expensive hardware.
-
-
-
-As a side note, the personal Linux system of Matt Welsh (this FAQ's
-originator) was a 486DX2-66, 20 megabytes of RAM, equipped with a VLB
-S3-864 chipset card with 2 megabytes of DRAM. He ran X benchmarks on
-this machine as well as on Sun Sparc IPX workstations. The Linux
-system was roughly 7 times faster than the Sparc IPX (for the curious,
-XFree86-3.1 under Linux, with this video card, runs at around 171,000
-xstones; the Sparc IPX at around 24,000). In general, XFree86 on a
-Linux system with an accelerated SVGA card will give you much greater
-performance than that found on commercial UNIX workstations (which
-usually employ simple framebuffers for graphics).
-
-
-
-Your machine will need at least 4 megabytes of physical RAM, and 16
-megabytes of virtual RAM (for example, 8 megs physical and 8 megs swap).
-Remember that the more physical RAM that you have, the less that the system
-will swap to and from disk when memory is low. Because swapping is
-inherently slow (disks are very slow compared to memory), having 8
-megabytes of RAM or more is necessary to run XFree86 comfortably. 16 is
-better. A system with 4 megabytes of physical RAM could run
-''much'' (up to 10 times) more slowly than one with 8 megs
-or more.
-
-----
-!!!3. Installing XFree86
-
-It's quite likely that you obtained XFree86 as part of a Linux
-distribution, in which case downloading the software separately is not
-necessary. Or you may be able to get RPM binary packages built for your
-machine, in which case you can just install those using rpm(1). In either
-case you can skip this the rest of this section.
-
-
-
-The Linux binary distributions of XFree86 can be found on a number of
-FTP sites. On the XFree86 site they are
here.
-You will want either the Linux-axp-glibc21, Linux-ix86-glibc20, or
-Linux-ix86-glibc21 subdirectories, depending on your processor type
-(axp=alpha, ix86=Intel 80x86) and Gnu C library version.
-
-
-
-Before doing anything else, download and run the `Xinstall.sh' shell
-script first. This may tell you about prerequisites you'll need to have in
-place before continuing your installation. Complete instructions for
-installing the XFree86 binary distribution are at http://www.xfree86.org/4.1./Install2.html.
-
-
-
-The binary directory should contain release notes for the current
-version in RELNOTES. Consult those for installation
-details.
-
-
-
-All that is required to install XFree86 is to obtain the above files,
-create the directory /usr/X11R6 (as
-root), and unpack the files from
-/usr/X11R6 with a command such as:
-
-
-gzip -dc Xbin.tgz | tar xfB -
-
-Remember that these tar files are packed relative to
-/usr/X11R6, so it's important to unpack the files
-there.
-
-
-
-You need to make sure that /usr/X11R6/bin is on
-your path. This can be done by editing your system default
-/etc/profile or /etc/csh.login
-(based on the shell that you, or other users on your system, use). Or you
-can simply add the directory to your personal path by modifying
-.bashrc or .cshrc, based on your
-shell.
-
-
-
-You also need to make sure that /usr/X11R6/lib
-can be located by __ld.so__, the runtime linker. To do this,
-add the line:
-
-
-/usr/X11R6/lib
-
-to the file /etc/ld.so.conf, and run
-/sbin/ldconfig, as root.
-
-----
-!!!4. Configuring XFree86
-!!4.1. Normal Configuration
-
-Configuring XFree86 to use your mouse, keyboard, monitor, and video
-card correctly used to be something of a black art, requiring extensive
-hand-hacking of a complex configuration file. No more; recent releases
-have made the process nearly trivial. It simplifies matters a lot that
-there are no longer separate servers for different kinds of cards, just
-modules loaded by a common server.
-
-
-
-If you're enabling X as you intall a Linux distribution, the
-distribution install script will ask the few questions needed to
-configure X. Otherwise, all you need do to configure it is fire up
-the command __XFree86 -configure__.
-
-
-
-Both methods depend on the fact that all new PC hardware these days
-ships with monitors that can tell X what their capabilities are. When
-invoked in this mode, X does that query and also polls your hardware
-for the presence of a mouse and keyboard. It then writes out a
-configuration file thar is used by later runs of X.
-
-
-
-One minor point to keep in mind is that, if you're like most people
-using a current PC, your keyboard is actually what
-__XF86Setup__ calls `Generic 102-key PC (intl)' rather than
-the default `Generic 101-key PC'. If you pick the default (101) the key
-cluster on the extreme right of your keyboard (numeric keypad and friends)
-may stop working.
-
-----
-!!!5. Running XFree86
-
-With your XF86Config file configured, you're
-ready to fire up the X server and give it a spin. First, be sure that
-/usr/X11R6/bin is on your path.
-
-
-
-The command to start up XFree86 is
-
-
-startx
-
-This is a front-end to __xinit__ (in case you're used
-to using __xinit__ on other UNIX systems).
-
-
-
-This command will start the X server and run the commands found in
-the file .xinitrc in your home
-directory. .xinitrc is just a shell script containing
-X clients to run. If this file does not exist, the system default
-/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc will be used.
-
-
-
-A standard .xinitrc file looks like this:
-
-
-#!/bin/sh
-xterm -fn 7x13bold -geometry 80x32+10+50 8
-xterm -fn 9x15bold -geometry 80x34+30-10 8
-oclock -geometry 70x70-7+7 8
-xsetroot -solid midnightblue 8
-exec fvwm2
-
-This script will start up two __xterm__ clients, an
-__oclock__, and set the root window (background) color to
-__midnightblue__. It will then start up
-__fvwm2__, the window manager. Note that
-__fvwm2__ is executed with the shell's
-__exec__ statement; this causes the __xinit__
-process to be replaced with __fvwm2__. Once the
-__fvwm2__ process exits, the X server will shut down. You
-can cause __fvwm2__ to exit by using the root menus: depress
-mouse button 1 on the desktop background -- this will display a pop up menu
-which will allow you to __Exit Fvwm2__.
-
-
-
-Be sure that the last command in .xinitrc is
-started with __exec__, and that it is not placed into the
-background (no ampersand on the end of the line). Otherwise the X server
-will shut down as soon as it has started the clients in the
-.xinitrc file.
-
-
-
-Alternately, you can exit X by pressing
-ctrl-alt-backspace in combination. This will kill the X
-server directly, exiting the window system.
-
-
-
-The above is a very, very simple desktop configuration. Many wonderful
-programs and configurations are available with a bit of work
-on your .xinitrc file.
-
-
-
-If you are new to the X Window System environment, we strongly suggest
-picking up a book such as ''The Joy of X: An Overview of the X
-Window System'' by Niall Mansfield (Addison-Wesley 1993, ISBN
-0201-565129). Using and configuring X is far too in-depth to cover
-here. See the man pages for __xterm__,
-__oclock__, and __fvwm2__ for clues on
-getting started.
-
-----
-!!!6. Translations
-
-
-
-
-****
-
- Italian
-
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-****
-****
-
- Slovenian
-
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-****
-****
-
- Croatian
-
-
-****
-****
-
- Dutch
-
-
-****
-****
-
- Hungarian
-
-
-****
+Describe [HowToXFree86HOWTO]
here.
