XFree86-HOWTO.pdf

The Linux XFree86 HOWTO

Eric Steven Raymond

Thyrsus Enterprises

esr@thyrsus.com

$Date: 2001/09/09 08:29:29 $

Revision History

Revision 7.2

2001−09−09

Revised by: esr

XFree86 site has changed directory structure.

Revision 7.1

2001−08−09

Revised by: esr

Configuration has changed, and is now much simpler.

Revision 7.0

2000−08−21

Revised by: esr

First 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.

The Linux XFree86 HOWTO

Table of Contents

1. Introduction. ....................................................................................................................................................1

1.1. Other sources of information. ...........................................................................................................1

1.2. New versions of this documen. ........................................................................................................1

1.3. Feedback and Corrections. ................................................................................................................1

2. Hardware requirements. ................................................................................................................................3

3. Installing XFree86. ..........................................................................................................................................4

4. Configuring XFree86. .....................................................................................................................................5

4.1. Normal Configuration. ......................................................................................................................5

5. Running XFree86. ...........................................................................................................................................6

6. Translations. ....................................................................................................................................................7

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.org > . 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.com > . 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.

1. Introduction

The Linux XFree86 HOWTO

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.

1. Introduction

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.

2. Hardware requirements

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