Linux Adventures: Configuring X

Configuring X

One of the reasons I purchased Red Hat was that it came with a commercial X-server, Metro-X. However, Metro-X I have doesn't support my video card (Diamond Stealth 3D 2000). Although not present on the Red Hat distribution there is an X server that supports this card in XFree86 3.2. It's the server that supports S3/Virge chipset.

I had configured the server for S3 chipset (which is what is used by the Diamond cards) but that didn't work with my card. I didn't even attempt to configure a simple SVGA server, because I wanted higher resolution and lots of colors. So, I downloaded XF86_S3V from Xfree86 web site and did the following to set it up:

First I copied the file XF86_S3V to the /usr/X11R6/bin directory.
Then I went to the /etc/X11 directory and created a symbolic link to the new server:
ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_S3V X
Now, after few small edits of the XF86Config I was able to execute the starx command and get X-windows to come up. If you are really curious click here to see my XF86Config.

By the way, at this time (March '97) the XF86_S3V server has a limit of how many colors it can display - it only works with 16bpp. There is a beta version that supports 24bpp, but I haven't tried that one yet.

Setting up AfterStep Window Manager

For my window manager I use AfterStep. It's window manager that emulates the look of the Next computer. Check out the AfterStep home page for more details: http://afterstep.edoc.com.

I downloaded the sources for AfterStep-1.0pre02, compiled them, then did did make install and I was up and running. Since then I have fiddled a little with the ".steprc" file to customise my desktop.

Here is what it looks like so far:

Click on the small image to see full size image.