X Configuration Woes

[Jeff Rollin]

On 12/09/06, Jerold McAllister <jerrymc at msu.edu> wrote:
>
> Arindam writes:
>
> >
> >> I am an absolute FreeBSD Newbie and I decided to give it a try over a
> >> lazy weekend - mainly because I don't want to throw away my old PIII
> >> box. I picked up FreeBSD 5.4 which was all I got and I am dual booting
> >> it with RHEL4.3. My box is rather old ... P3 733 Mhz with 256 megs of
> >> SDRAM at 100MHz, and I installed FreeBSD on the first 6.5 Gigs of my
> >> Seagate harddrive ... connected to the Primary master IDE interface.
> >>
>
> Well, installing FreeBSD for the first time is more compatible with
> an ambitious weekend than an lazy one - as you probably have discovered.
> It does take considerable work, though the rewards are commensurate.
>
> >> ....
> >> If you can wade through this gibberish, please help.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Andy
> >
> > Some updates:
> >
> > Following this I did a fresh install using the FreeBSD6.1 CD1. Xorg
> > installed is 6.9.0.
> > I did not run xorgconfig or anything. There was no /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> > either. From the command-line I ran "xdm" and the GUI started ... I
> > could login ... and then that's about it.
> >
> > 1. The Mouse still does not work ... may be I should try MouseSystems
> > protocol.
>
> I can't say much about the mouse.   I usually let it figure out
> things itself and it works.  Is it a plain ps2 mouse (with round ps2
> connector)?   I just do the mouse test during sysinstall and it works.
>
> > 2. What should I do about GNOME / KDE etc. I am not aching to get a
> > jazzy a GUI on my FreeBSD installation. I can make do with a very
> > minimal one. But I want a minimal one at least now, I just have to get
> > this running or I can't sleep.
>
> If you don't want a fancy GUI desktop, then skip KDE and Gnome.
>
> I prefer to use Afterstep.   It installs nicely.
> It is found in ports at    /usr/ports/x11-wm/afterstep
> It can be a little confusing at first to set up and configure - as are
> all X things - but after getting it configured for me, it gives me what I
> need: several windows for logging in to various hosts, a button to bring
> up Firefoxand X support for whatever I run, such as OpenOffice or Xpdf
> or Xmahjongg and a couple of other games, etc.



Another you might like to try is XFCE. It's sort of midway between the likes
of Afterstep and GNOME/KDE. Its own file manager has traditionally sucked,
but the beauty of Linux is, you can mix and match. Plus, the new file
manager (Thunar) in the newest versions looks lovely (I don't think you'll
get the newest versions of anything if you install the ports collection from
the RELEASE CDs though.)

>
> I edited:   /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc
> to make it work my way.   I think you can make individual .xinitrc files
> in home directories as well, but I wanted mine to work for all of my
> small handful of accounts so I edited the main one.


That's correct; an awful lot of stuff in places like /usr/X11R6/lib and
/etc, including .xinitrc and the .z* Z Shell configuration files, consists
of global default settings and can be modified for each user in analogous
configuration files in $HOME.

Jeff Rollin