[RULE] Problem starting X (GUI)

[Michael Fratoni]

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On Monday 21 April 2003 04:13 pm, Ingo Lantschner wrote:

> > It would appear that the package lists for KDE and Gnome could use
> > some work. I'll get them fixed as soon as I can.
>
> Confusing, so let me as the newbie summarize and check if I got the
> point:
>
> 1. Some mistakes in the diskimages for Slinky 0.3.8 are the reason why
> installing Gnome or KDE from RH8.0 with these disks does not work. So I
> wait for a fixed Slinky propably 0.3.9 ?

Correct. The setup scripts contain lists of files to install for each 
package set. I need to correct those lists and create new images.
I will warn you that on my laptop (PII-100 w/ 40M RAM) KDE is basically 
unusable. It is just far too slow to be effective at all. 

> 2. There is an alternative to XFree86 called somehow kdesk, tinyX,
> fluxbox ... Can you or someone else please explain how the following
> words fit together and what is replaced by what:
> 	XFree86 (X-Server)

The Xserver can be replaced by the tinyX package. The stock XFree86 
package does contain much more than the server, however.

> 	metacity/twm/sawfish (Windowmanager)

Can be replaced by fluxbox, openbox, afterstep...

> 	KDE/Gnome (Desktop and Apps)

Most anything related to Gnome or KDE carries with it some overhead. It is 
not normally possible to install a KDE application, for example, without 
also installing a multitude of other packages.

> 	xfs (Fontserver)

Not strictly needed.

> 	TinyX (?)
Small X server, with limited features.

> 	kdisk (?)

?

> 	fluxbox (?)

Small, fast window manager. Lacks the "eye candy" of both KDE and Gnome, 
however, it seems to work well, and is a much more useable application in 
a memory limited environment.

> 3. quoting again Michael
>
> > If your test machine doesn't have a lot of RAM, you might want to try
> > one of the smaller window managers as well. I've built several
> > possible choices:
> > http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/XFree86/
>
> This is definitly interesting for us. We seldom have machines with more
> than 64 MB of RAM. I already tried RH 8.0 Bluecurf on them - not a good
> experience :-)
> So what shall I do: Install with Slinky and add afterwards the package
> for flux? (rpm --install fluxbox-0.1.12-3RULE.i386.rpm)
>
> During Slinkyinstall, shall I install XFree86 and/or Gnome? (Well this
> may be already answered in point 2.)

I posted a mail to the list just before you joined. I'll include it at the 
end of this message. 
I normally use slinky, and install only the network, openssh, mailserver, 
and web-tools package sets. I then manually add other things I'm testing.
Selecting the base XFree packages probably wouln't hurt. Most of the 
packages included in that group would need to be added anyway.

> 4. Somewhere on the list I read that replacing xfs with static
> font-pathes may be good for performance. Is this still true?

I haven't tried, but it should be possible. 

> Ok, so sorry for these simple questions - I hope they are not too
> boring. May be I can write an Installguide for newbies once I have got
> the points.

No problem at all.

Here is the previous mail detailing installing TinyX. Note that this was 
for a Red Hat 9 machine. You'll want to use the packages for the 8.0 
release.
If you check the list archives, I'm sure I posted similar instructions for 
Red Hat Linux 8.0. I just checked and found this one:

http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/rule-list/2002-11/msg00037.html

If you need help or clarification, just let me know.

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(For Red Hat 9)
Here is what I did:
Installed the following packages:

xf86-corefonts-0.2-2
cabextract-0.6-1

The 2 above are for Microsoft's core fonts package, and available here:
(This is one of my other projects)
   http://sourceforge.net/projects/font-tool/

fluxbox-0.1.14-1RULErh9

http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/XFree86/fluxbox-0.1.14-1RULErh9.i386.rpm

XFree86-TinyX-4.3.0-2RULErh9
http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/XFree86/kdrive/9/XFree86-TinyX-4.3.0-2RULErh9.i386.rpm
(Get the startx and xinitrc files from that directory as well)

Everything else is on CD 1 of the Shrike disks.

xinitrc-3.32-1
XFree86-truetype-fonts-4.3.0-2
XFree86-Mesa-libGL-4.3.0-2
XFree86-75dpi-fonts-4.3.0-2
XFree86-4.3.0-2
XFree86-100dpi-fonts-4.3.0-2
Glide3-20010520-25
XFree86-xauth-4.3.0-2
XFree86-xfs-4.3.0-2
XFree86-base-fonts-4.3.0-2
XFree86-font-utils-4.3.0-2
XFree86-libs-4.3.0-2
XFree86-Mesa-libGLU-4.3.0-2
XFree86-libs-data-4.3.0-2
cpp-3.2.2-5
libpng-1.2.2-16
switchdesk-3.9.8-15
desktop-file-utils-0.3-5
chkfontpath-1.9.7-1
fontconfig-2.1-9
ttmkfdir-3.0.9-1
freetype-2.1.3-6

This installs everything required to satisfy all dependencies.

copy startx to /usr/X11R6/bin/ replacing the stock version.
ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa /usr/X11R6/bin/X
chmod +s /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa
cp xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
startx

Other possible kdrive servers are:
# rpm -ql XFree86-TinyX
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xfbdev
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xi810
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xigs
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xmach64
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xsavage
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xsis530
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xtrident
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xtrio
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xts300
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa

Once fluxbox is up, right click for a menu, select fluxbox-menu, select
configure, and enable antialias.
Marvel at the antialiased true type fonts. :)

- -- 
- -Michael

pgp key:  http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/gpgkey.txt
Red Hat Linux 7.{2,3}|8.0 in 8M of RAM: http://www.rule-project.org/
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