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

obligatory

[dr_steel]

emerge xorg-x11 startx ... had to do it

Re:obligatory

[identity0]

Obligatory Debian fanatic post!

apt-get install xorg
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package xorg

Shit. Maybe by 2005?

Re:obligatory

[darc]

2005? You're using unstable, aren't you?

Hell, i'm using stable, still waiting for them to port that new fangled program I keep hearing about, what's it called... gopher?

Gentoo

[Gaima]

emerge x11-base/xorg-x11
emerge unmerge xfree

No crashes, no errors, no odd behaviour at all.

(Dell Dimension, P4 2.66, Matrox G400MAX, Matrox drivers, xinerama)

Re:Gentoo

[crstophr]

don't you mean:

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge x11-base/xorg-x11

You see, this is still in "unstable"...

Re:Gentoo

[superjaded]

Ew, that's bad.
echo "x11-base/xorg-x11" >>/etc/portage/package.keywords
(you'll have to do the same thing for things like utempter and xterm as well, since those are ~x86)
emerge -C xfree (xfree blocks xorg, so you have to uninstall first)
emerge xorg-x11

And as should be implied, if you already have an installation of xfree, the config file works with it out of the box. In fact, the config file generated from xorgconfig (which, incidentally, looks exactly like the XF86Config util) is pretty much the same as the one generated from the XF86Config util, save for a different header most likely ("This config file was generated" by blah).

But there's really no difference between the current X.org release and Xfree4.3.0 save for some patches that they have may have backported from 4.4. But I've been running X.org's implementation for quite a few months now and while I haven't noticed any significant difference between xfree and X.org at the moment.. that's not to say that will be the same as time goes on.

I think this "release" was mostly just to get the thing out of the door and get its name out there. The REAL cool stuff will be coming during the next releases. They're already trying to get the damage and composite extensions ported to the X.org tree. Those who've played around with KeithP's kdrive/Xserver have seen both of those extensions in action. Just imagining the composite extention in cooperation with something like cairo and glitz just makes me drool.

i'm not sure

[Siniset]

but isn't it no longer xfree86.conf by rather xorg.conf or something like that? Just a thought, not sure if the submitter wrote xfree86conf by accident...maybe that's the problem? Also, Mandrake now has rpm's of it (didn't that get posted today, btw?), maybe you should try installing the rpms?

Re:i'm not sure

[bersl2]

That's the only gotcha I encountered. Other than that, I like it more than XFree86. I use a Voodoo3 as a second graphics card, and XFree86 had some problems with it; X.org handles it perfectly.

Re:i'm not sure

[Gaima]

It's using the exact same XF86Config as xfree was.
As I don't have an xorg.conf it will use the Xfree name.

mahdell root # grep /X11/ /var/log/Xorg.0.log
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/XF86Config"

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...)

Re:i'm not sure

[Curtman]

It will parse XF86Config if xorg.conf isn't there. Just like XFree 4 would parse XF86Config if XF86Config-4 wasn't there.

# grep /X11/ /var/log/Xorg.0.log
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"

No problems here here either. I was really expecting at least some, but nothing so far. Now hopefully Gatos will shift full on into Xorg, (patches exist already for Xorg & XFree 4.4.0) and merge in the TV-Out branch while we're at it. :)

Slack-current xorg packages worked

[c.r.o.c.o]

I did not try to compile xorg, I just installed the default packages from Slack-current installed without any problems. Once that was done, I just renamed XF86Config to xorg.conf, and it worked without ANY problems. If I didn't know I had xorg instead XFree86, I couldn't tell the difference. This is obviously because for now they are virtually identical (other than a few different names).

If the packages are available for your distribution, give those a try to see if you have any incompatibilities. Compiling xorg is not easy, I remember it took me three tries in Gentoo (can't remember what was the problem, this was XFree86 4.1.0). In your case, something tells me that you wouldn't be able to compile XFree86 4.4.0 on your system either.

Re:Slack-current xorg packages worked

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you people compiling from scratch? That's so old fashined. just install the RPM's and get back to work.

Re:Slack-current xorg packages worked

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

What? And settle for UN-OPTIMIZED binaries like some plebe? Forget that!

Besides, I had to grab the CVS from the DRI branch to get S3/SavageDDR (It's a laptop, I didn't have much choice...) direct-rendering support. Why not compile it up with "-O2 -march=athlon-xp -mmmx -m3dnow -msse -mfpmath=sse,387" while I'm at it?...

Yes, I'm also running on bleeding-edge CVS compile of KDE 3.3-post-alpha as well (working fine for me, incidentally...)

Think of it as the civilized nerd equivalent of peeing on the computer to mark it as yours. Except that you don't ruin the computer and/or get painfully shocked in the process (uh, you know, or so I've HEARD....)

Fedora Core 2

[Joff_NZ]

I'm running X.org, by way of "upgrading" my FC1 install to FC2... a couple of problems: had to change the "XkbRules" option to "xorg".

Now I can't bind most of the multimedia keys to X keycodes. I expect this is related to the XkbRules thing.

Apart from that, its been running fine.

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.)

Re:Fedora Core 2

[Feztaa]

Well, I did a clean install of FC2, and I'm running X.org with no problems at all...

I just chose my proper keyboard in the keyboard prefs, and then went into the keyboard shortcut prefs, and pressed the keys and everything worked just fine (eg, bound "mute" to my mute button, and it came up as "XF86AudioMute"). The only key that didn't work was the "Log Off" button, unfortunately... but that's probably a side effect of me using the slightly wrong keyboard layout (for some reason, no program I've ever used has ever heard of the "Microsoft Natural MultiMedia Keyboard", I had to pick "Microsoft Wireless Multimedia Keyboard", which was closest in name (my keyboard isn't wireless).

I should look into writing my own keyboard layout file or something to get that log off key working. I know it works; back on FC1 I had to manually program all the extra keycodes to have the XF86* keysyms so that programs would even recognise them, then I bound commands to them all manually with gconf.

Re:Fedora Core 2

[prefect42]

Or just recompile the kernel with the 4k stacks option removed, or download the binaries that are available.

Re:Fedora Core 2

[13Echo]

You don't need to wait on nVidia since X.org and XF86 are virtually the same. The nVidia driver set works fine with X.org. I'm using it with an FX 5900 XT without any problems.

The only difference is that you'll need to configure an "xorg.conf" file instead of an "XF86Config" file.

Slackware current...

[cymen]

I used swaret to upgrade my slackware current install to the X.org packages (x11). Everything worked but fonts rendered poorly (I did recompile and symlink all the freetype libraries to my version that has the bytecode rendering enabled) and my Synaptics touchpad (Dell laptop) didn't function properly in regards to the advanced features. I didn't notice the second item as I don't use those features (my brother does) but the first problem, with the fonts, was very annoying. I'm going back to slackware 9.1 when I get a chance.

I just put in a new 40 gb drive so I loaded up Windows XP to get a little experience with it. Not too bad but Cleartype is a little funky even with 32 bit video. I prefer the freetype rendering under X when it is working nicely.

Sounds like its working to me.

[mcowger]

From you checklist there soudns like you got the xserver running just fine...gnome & kde are completely separate, and may need to be relinked?

Re:Sounds like its working to me.

[Curtman]

Mine were linked against XFree 4.3.0, and work fine with Xorg.

slackware

[blindbat]

Installed them off of slackware current.

No problems installing or running.

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:doing it on debian

[Curtman]

That performance is probably just due to you recompiling it, rather than using the 386 optimized binaries from sid.

Fedora

[wowbagger]

Under Fedora, the single biggest problems I had were:

1) Bitchslapping the system into allowing me to install the RPMs - I had to do a few "rpm --erase --justdb --nodeps" on a few things to "resolve" some conflicts.

2) Removing the /usr/X11R6/lib/tls/libGL* files to get the new Mesa renderer to run.

Other than that, I had very little problem.

I would suggest checking your X executable with ldd (ldd `which X`) and seeing if you are picking up a bad library somewhere.

xorg fork

[OmniVector]

x.org's x11 server was simply one of the xfree 4.4 release candidates before the license change, with some patches to bring back up to the 4.4 release. it should be almost absolutely identical to installing xfree86. i'm not sure why this even needed to be posted. there is pretty much no difference to install/configure than xfree 4.4

Try another distro please

[Maljin Jolt]

I am afraid Mandrake is not the best distro to experimentally mess with core components. Too many things are tweaked a Mic^H^Handrakesoft's way, the desktops certainly are. It is not easy to rebuild even XFree86 to keep up with those tweaks, so your problems with X.org actually says nothing. And yes, I used to rebuild an XFree86 on Mandrake.

Some other distros, a Slackware for example, use much pure way to build it's own packages which makes them better tool for this kind of experiments.

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:why is X.org's better?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, its just an XFree86 fork from before they changed the license. Exactly the same as XFree86, except X.Org's license is still considered GPL compatible.

lin XOrg

[sofar]

using lunar linux. It automatically replaced xfree86, no need to specifically install startx as it comes with the XOrg package already. Didn't need to adjust any config files... the old one just works fine on all boxes I upgraded (nvidia setup, ati fglrx 9500, and an old trident based laptop).

Gentoo

[nempo]

Point your browser to http://forums.gentoo.org and do a search for xorg. You'll find all the information that you'll ever need.

At this point, the license

[Feztaa]

As noted in another post, X.org and XFree86 are basically identical code-wise. The only difference is that X.org has a more palatable license, which is why all the major distros switched over so quickly.

The other reason requires looking into the mysterious future... basically, politics at XFree86 were getting in the way of development, which was part of the reason for the fork; in 1 year's time, you can expect X.org to have a vibrant community of developers, with all funky new features in the X server, while XFree86 just sits and stagnates.

Read up about the X.org server

It didn't cause me any more than one problem

[Yrd]

I installed from the Gentoo Linux xorg-x11 6.7.0 ebuild (onto a Gentoo box, oddly enough). The ebuild authors did a good job, so it downloaded, compiled and installed happily.

I did have some difficulty with the ATi binary graphics card drivers for my Radeon 9800 Pro... the installed ones wouldn't work with X.Org, and the ebuild insisted on having XFree86 available. I haven't checked to see if the ebuild's been updated to handle X.Org, but I would expect it has. I'm not that bothered anyway, as I don't game under Linux very much, so the open source drivers work very nicely, as I get decent 2D performance, and Xv so I can watch DVDs.

I may revise my opinion on the value of good 3D acceleration for my Linux desktop when there's an OpenGL compositing X server available, but the drivers for that are likely to be completely different anyway.

Re:Works fine for me

[13Echo]

Same here. I've used it for about 2 months now with 3 graphics cards; Rage 128 with opensource drivers, Radeon 9500 PRO with ATI's drivers, and an nVidia GeForce FX 5900 XT with nVidia's drivers. All have worked well.

XV overlay support is broken in X.org at the moment (as well as XF86 4.4, to my knowledge). There will be occasional problems with DRI based cards, and nVidia cards will exhibit a blue display when you play your first movie after a reboot.

Very Problematic

[untwisted]

So far, I've had nothing but trouble with the new X.org. I've recently installed Fedora Core 2, which was a dumb idea from the start. I have a Nvidia geForce4 ti4400, which doesn't get along nicely with 4k stacks (which is a default kernel setting in FC2). Well, when I tried to run FC2 for the first time, I got all kinds of problems with X (because of the nVidia driver). So being the resourceful person that I am, I used lynx to browse the web and find a solution. The first solution was to download a vanilla kernel from www.kernel.org, and compile without 4k stacks. I did this, but for some reason, X still gave me problems. I then tried rolling back to the generic nv driver that comes with FC, and again, X gives me problems. Story short, I went through about 30 different solutions, none of which work. The closest I've gotten is X starts, but it just sits there on a black screen. I can get Xtern to work, but not much else. I'm waiting on the new nVidia drivers, maybe everything will work with a set of good drivers, and the default Fedora settings, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Maybe it's just FC, but as far as I can tell, X is just being bitchy.

BLFS

[Ann Elk]

Beyond Linux From Scratch has step-by-step instructions for installing many packages from source, including the latest Xorg.

First time user

[wellard1981]

Doing a fresh install of Gentoo 2004.1, I thought I would try out X.org's X11R6. After a short time compiling, the software was installed and ready to run. I found the xorgconfig program and ran it. After that I edited the xorg.conf in /etc/X11 and updated it to include my mouse settings.

Ran startx and there it was! .. Seemed to load a bit quicker than XFree.

I then emerged the nVidia GLX and Kernel drives, updated my xorg.conf and fired up X again, this time it reported "No screens found", due to the kernel module not being loaded, an lsmod later showed that it was there.

I copied the nVidia driver from /usr/portage/distfiles to /root and ran it myself, after doing this, another modprobe nvidia and a startx and up popped X, so this said to me there is something screwy with Gentoo's way of managing nVidia drivers.

Two days later, and it's working perfectly, already started another game of Farcry and Call of Duty! (Yes, they do run on Linux with a little bit of fiddling) :)

Anyway, I can quite happly say that I am impressed with X.org's X11.

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.

fedora core 2 & matrox g450 & xinerama (du

[i621148]

step 1: i did a clean install, letting fedora set up my xorg.conf file.
i am using a matrox g450 with two dell flat panel monitors. right out
of the box, they were both enabled in "clone" mode.

step 2: i just used the advanced tab under preferences: screensaver to
enable display power management. i set power management enabled. standby
after 15 min, suspend after 15 min, and off after 15 minutes. this
automatically enabled the power features. i did not have to add any
lines the x configuration file as in previous versions of redhat.

step 3: become root and edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf after the section entitled
Section "Module"
blah
EndSection
I inserted these lines:

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama"
EndSection

I saved and pressed control-alt-backspace to restart the xserver. after loggin in again,
i went to system settings: display.

there appeared a tab labeled "dual head" i clicked "use dual head"
then i configured my second monitor and picked spanning desktops.
after hitting ok, i hit ctrl-alt-backspace again and presto!!!!!!
xineraman was enabled with power management. i did not install any of the matrox drivers or use the mgapdesk utility.
i just used the above instructions and that was it right out of the box....

also as to everyone badmouthing fedora core 2 , i am very impressed and
have found a great many features that have been improved and generally
well thought out. i am very glad i upgraded....

if anyone wants to see my xorg.conf file here it is:
# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Multihead layout" Screen 0 "Screen0" LeftOf "Screen1" Screen 1 "Screen1" 0 0 InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" Option "Xinerama" "on" Option "Clone" "off" EndSection Section "Files" # RgbPath is the location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the # file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db"). There is normally # no need to change the default. # Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together) # By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of # the X server to render fonts. RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb" FontPath "unix/:7100" EndSection Section "Module" Load "dbe" Load "extmod" Load "fbdevhw" Load "glx" Load "record" Load "freetype" Load "type1" Load "dri" EndSection Section "ServerFlags" Option "Xinerama" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1)) # Option "Xleds" "1 2 3" # To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable. # Option "XkbDisable" # To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the # lines below (which are the defaults). For example, for a non-U.S. # keyboard, you will probably want to use: # Option "XkbModel" "pc102" # If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use: # Option "XkbModel" "microsoft" # # Then to change the language, change the Layout setting. # For example, a german layout can be obtained with: # Option "XkbLayout" "de" # or: # Option "XkbLayout" "de" # Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys" # # If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and # control keys, use: # Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps" # Or if you just want both to be control, use: # Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps" # Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "keyboard" Option "XkbModel" "pc105" Option "XkbLayout" "us" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse0" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" Option "Emulate3