First Experiences with X.org's X11 Server?

Slashdot Reader CanadianCrackPot decided to be adventurous and went and installed the latest offering from X.org's X-Server project. Below, you'll find "the basics" of his "first attempt to install [their] X Window Server on a system with a 450 MHz PIII, and Diamond Viper V770 (TNT2 chipset) graphics card, running Mandrake 10.0 Official (FTP download of everything but the RPMS.cooker dir)." To make a long story short, while he did have some luck with installing it, running it was...problematic. He asks: "I'm just wondering how other Slashdot readers are doing with the new X11R6 server, and more importantly, how did you install it?" "I decided to try installing X.org's X Server today while I had nothing to do here's the results:

• get a test bed system: check
• get sources: check
• ./configure: N/A...I'm worried
• make World: check
• make install; make install.man: check
• startx: crash
• xf86config: check
• startx, again: check -- now I need a manager
• startgnome: galeon not found (crash)
• startkde: crash"

If you've had any luck getting X.org's X-server running on your machine, what hurdles did you have to overcome before it worked?

Comments

doing it on debian

[pondering llama]

I'm using debian sid on a dell inspiron 1100 -- first off, getting linux alive on this machine isn't the easiest, and Dell seem to be on a mission to break things with every BIOS release. Oddly enough the bios is on revision 29, and the last revision broke my ability to halt the system. But I digress.

After seeing that distros like mandrake were getting in on the x.org action, i also had a look.

I only had 2 issues:

1. xdm wouldn't compile -- so i removed it from the makefile, since i don't use xdm
2. make install didn't run ldconfig, which meant that x was horribly broken the first few times i ran it until i figured out from an strace that programs like glxinfo were looking for .so's where they weren't. Running ldconfig sorted out the problem.

My experiences have, so far, been ok with x.org's version. Quake3 framerates seem at least as good, perhaps a little better than xfree86, and glxgears reports higher framerates than I remember under xfree. Startup is a little quicker, and X in general seems a little snappier. I don't know how much to attribute to the fact that the running version of X was compiled from source and the original version was binary installed from a .deb. But, purely on an ethical level, I am happy with x.org's version, and I will try it on my desktop when I get back home -- I know the q3 response on that machine a lot better, and that will give me a more accurate feel for x.org's version.

Re:i'm not sure

[CanadianCrackPot]

I did this yesterday before the story came out about the Mandrake RPMS. I haven't located them yet, and besides I was bored and had some time to kill on the install.

On the note about the .conf files I find it a little strange that running xf86conf managed to get startx working without a manager. Oh well back to the drawing board (or the ftp site of Mandrake...)

emerge, no mayor problems

[fedux]

I'm using xorg in gentoo.

I worked fine from the beginnig except for 2 things: - fonts that look kind of ugly
- my monitor blanks about 30 min. from boot, I move the mouse and everything back to normal.

Everything else seems to work OK

why is X.org's better?

[bergeron76]

I'm new to X.org's release and I'm wondering why it's better than Xfree86. Are there any compelling reasons to switch? In my mind, compelling reasons are existing irritations with X that have been resolved (specificially the issues between switching among text and X consoles)...

Anyone care to post a few reasons why we should switch?

Please note: Slackware has switched, and since slackware is my Distro of Choice (DioCh - [pronounced: deeotch]), I'm going to end up using it in the end anyway. I'm just curious to know whats so great about it...

Re:Fedora Core 2

[digitect]

I have the exact same hardware as in the article (450 MHz PIII, and Diamond Viper V770 (TNT2 chipset)) and a fresh install of Fedora Core 2 worked the first time.

Of course we have to wait on Nvidia before we get GL, but I've been able to use this exact hardware on every version of Red Hat since 5.1. (I had to do some manual config tweaking up to about 7.0, but it's been automatically configured since then.)

xorg has better support for my video card

[milgr]

Since upgrading from RH9 to FC2++, I have been able to have a xinerama display between the laptop LCD, and the external monitor, even running the displays at different resolutions.

FWIW, it is a Radeon-7500.

I do have a couple of obscure problems. I reported the most pressing problems...

1. When I startup a vncviewer or an xnest, control keys are not forwarded to windows in VNC or Xnest.

2. Gnome panels are a bit quirky. It insists on having the gnome-panel be entirely on one screen. If I have a gnome-panel on my LCD, and start VNC - then the panel is moved to my LCD screen. This is even worse if I try to have a separate panel on each screen for equivalent screen locations.

3. Usually windows pop up on the same screen as the mouse pointer. If that screen is full of windows, and the other screen has space, it usually pops up there instead.