HOWTO: Install X Window System and a Desktop Environment

[TristanDee]

Is this thread dead for god's sake? The last post is five-months old!
It has been a useful place for things related to xorg.

[Bro.Tiag]

Is this thread dead for god's sake? The last post is five-months old!
It has been a useful place for things related to xorg.

Nope, I'd say it's still relevant. Some bit's and pieces may be dated for testing & unstable, but for stable it still applies.

Cheers

[TristanDee]

Some bit's and pieces may be dated for testing

Yep, most discussions seem to be for Etch although most people perhaps run Lenny/Sid.

[Bro.Tiag]

Some bit's and pieces may be dated for testing

Yep, most discussions seem to be for Etch although most people perhaps run Lenny/Sid.

Aye, but the original post is still relevant for installing the X Window System and a Desktop Environment. The only real issue is screen resolution, which is dealt with in another thread.

Cheers

[sir fer]

this thread is awesome...opened up a whole 'nuther avenue of experimentation for me...trying e17 and IceWM as sole DEs funZ0rs galore >< haha

[jjmac]

Anything to do with X, whether it's compiling,installing, configuration --- is always a useful document/thread. Regardless if the particular post has a distro specific or generic concern.

The modularisation of X src in later versions has certainly made life a lot easier with regard to that too, imo.


jm

[dbbolton]

Usually I just install the driver for my video card and utils, and let apt drag in the dependencies. One of those meta-packages depends on the exceptionally ugly meta-package xserver-xorg-video-all, and I absolutely don't want that. Same thing with input: only need kbd, mouse, and evdev.

[jjmac]

Hello all,

Firstly, sorry about the anal tone of my last post (above) .
It sounds kind of wierd to me on reading it back (grin).

In any case ...

dbbolton wrote:

>>
Usually I just install the driver for my video card and utils, and let apt drag in the dependencies. One of those meta-packages depends on the exceptionally ugly meta-package xserver-xorg-video-all, and I absolutely don't want that. Same thing with input: only need kbd, mouse, and evdev.
>>

Yes, 'xserver-xorg-video-all' is a right pain ... But that's X for you. Such as ...
'xserver-xorg-video-all' says that it can be removed, but 'xserver-xorg' has it listed as a dependency.

One way to get around those things is by creating a customised meta package with out all the cruft. But including things that may be useful.

The irony there is that in order to know just what may be included that could be useful, involves a dload. After having looked up the file list.

I like to think that this 'jumping through hoops' syndrome that seems to be a built in to the packaging system, does actually have purpose . Such as, in a case like this, at least it helps prevent trivial mucking around. As good as deb is, its' openness to customisation does also allow for its' overall configuration to be easily screwed up by someone fiddling through their root account. And then trying to blame deb for the result. So i guess we must just have to live with these 'hoops' for the time being --- unless someone can think of a better way to have both worlds available.

Now, is that a new thread cue or what


jm

[canci]

x-server-video-all is a pain?

Sorry if I got something wrong, but, after stripping X down to what my laptop really needs,
I got 10,5 MB of free space. Hmm... Isn't this nitpicking?

[dbbolton]

x-server-video-all is a pain?

Sorry if I got something wrong, but, after stripping X down to what my laptop really needs,
I got 10,5 MB of free space. Hmm... Isn't this nitpicking?

If you really don't care about hard disk space or bandwidth, then yes, it is nitpicking. If you have a small hard drive-- say, 6 GB-- then 10 MB is kind of significant. And if you have a slow internet connection, downloading a few megabytes of debs that you don't have any conceivable use for during an upgrade is pretty wasteful too.

[jjmac]

Howdy All,

Yep, that's exactly it. I'm on dial up and while it is cheap, it's also slow.
And now that X is modularised i find i can indulge myself more with it.


jm

[canci]

@jjmac: Are you aware that, Debian Stable at least, is available on CD/DVD by vendors in your country?

http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/#au

I don't know their prices, but when I didn't have Internet, I ordered Debian Etch on 3 DVDs from our national
Linux user group for about 10€. This would probably be more expensive in Australia, but Linux user groups
also have "office hours" sometimes, so if you happen to be around one, you can sometimes just drop by
and kindly ask them to burn distros to your own DVDs for no or a very minimal charge.

[jjmac]

Howdy canci,


A bit delayed but, in any case, thanks for your suggestion. It is the logical route to go for dial up folks like myself, of course. But ... i like to hack in to my system and build/rebuild things myself where ever i can. And, when it comes to X ... a person will experience a noticeable performance improvement with a local (cpu specific) build, compared to a binary install. It will just utilise the facilities of the processor more fully than a general purpose pre-build. Hybrid systems are 'where it's at' though, so to speak.

And since X has been modularised, which has been for quite some time now, it has been much easier to achive. I do use the commercially provided cd/dvd route for initial installs though, as per your suggestion. As it has made that initial stage much easier to deal with, and only necessary rarely.




jm

[jjmac]

canci wrote:

>>
x-server-video-all is a pain?

Sorry if I got something wrong, but, after stripping X down to what my laptop really needs,
I got 10,5 MB of free space. Hmm... Isn't this nitpicking?
>>

Nope, that's not nitpicking at all. That's one of the things that deb, open source and other Unix like systems are all about. And made so much more easier with Xes modularity.

Why have drivers installed for every card ever made when a person may only need a couple. To cover the card they use, and possibly a backup card which may be different. It's like lugging around a giant too-box, full of every tool ever made for every truck ever made and trying to crame it all into the boot (grin). Well ... kinda

Where as, just fetching the three file pkg source set, or raw upstream source with the .dsc, diff.gz and working that ... and building locally, makes it an easy work round. And a much lighter system.


jm

[canci]

Actually, though I forgot about this post, I, too, tend to slim down my install as much as possible. The extra megs are not needed ATM, but who knows...