Chapter 6: Configuing the X Window System, Localization, and Printing Flashcards
What is the X Window System?
It’s the GUI environment for linux.
-It’s either really easy or REALLY hard to configure.
Different versions of X
- X Free 86- dominant until 2004
- X.org-X11-based on X Free 86. Independently developed
- Accellerated-X-an alternative that you may have luck with if your video card isn’t working
Configuring X using X itself
<b>XFree86 -configure</b> or <b>Xorg -configure</b>
Configuring X using Distro-specific tools
- Fedora has Display Settings Tool (<b>system-config-display</b>)
- SUSE has <b>YaST</b> and <b>YaST2</b>
X.org-11 Configuration File Format
<b>/etc/X11/xorg.conf</b>
XFree 86 4.x
<b>/etc/X11/xF86Config</b>(<b>-4</b>)
Xfree86 3.3.6
<b>/etc/X11/XF86Config</b>
What’s the first step to configuring X?
Boot into text-only mode.
X Configuration <b>InputDevice</b> section
You can view and modify keyboard and mouse settings
How do you determine the amount of RAM your video card needs in certain configurations?
R= xres x yres x bpp / 8,388,608
R = 1280 x 1024 x 24 / 8,388,608 = 3.75 MB
<b>xdisplayinfo</b>
This command gives you tons of information about your current display. use the <b>-ext</b> option to get even more technical information.
Bitmap Fonts
Individual pixels in an array are either active or not. They’re easy to manipulate and display, so they’re good for low powered computers, but they must be optimized for display at a particular resolution. That means you’re going to need a shit load of the same character to be able to scale at different font sizes.
Outline Fonts
These are modern, scalable fonts. They don’t look as good as bitmap fonts, especially when scaled to really small font sizes.
Where are fonts typically stored?
<b>/usr/share/fonts</b> or <b>/usr/share/X11/fonts</b> with X.org-X11
<b>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</b> in XFree86.
What do you do once you’ve copied fonts to a directory?
You create a summary file.
<b># mkfontscale #mkfontdir</b>
Simple as that.