This section is dedicated to the Linux binary distribution so all file names and site names are for Linux only. If you read this file and are not using Linux, you should get your hands on the announcement of the according version of XFree86 for you OS. In it you will find all necessary information on obtaining it.
You can get the binary distributions of XFree86
for Linux via
anonymous FTP from
where
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/X11/XFree86-ver
or
sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/X11/XFree86-ver
ver
is the version number of the XFree86 release you want
to obtain (e.g. 2.1
for XFree86 2.1).
The files have names of the form
XF86-ver-name.tar.gz
(versions
2.1 and 2.1.1) or xf86-name-2.0.tar.gz
where
ver
is the XFree86 version and name
is the name of the
package. If you already know, which server you need to run, you should
not get the *-svr*
file but the file XF86_servername.tar.gz
where servername
is the name of the server to run.
To get Version 2.1.1, which is only a bugfix release, you have to get the complete 2.1 distribution but the server files. In addition you have to get the 2.1.1 files (you will probably need only one server file, but you should get all the rest). Install the 2.1 files first and install the 2.1.1 files only after that.
Of course you can find it on all mirrors of those two, too. So please
look for a ftp site near to you mirroring sunsite
or tsx-11
to save bandwidth.
You can find an incomplete list of sites mirroring these two in the
bbs-list
to be found in the docs directories
of both sites. If you have access to archie, try using it to find a
site carrying Linux in your neighbourhood.
The distribution consists of several gzipped tarfiles. As some of
them are too large to fit on a single floppy, so you might have to split
those). For a concise description on what the tarfiles contain,
look at the README
file in this directory.
You will need the following setup to run XFree86
(split by versions). You have to have at least these versions, later
versions will work, too.
You can find the most recent versions on most linux sites [cf.
Where do I get XFree86
]. You can find the C library (
XFree86 version: 2.0 2.1 2.1.1
kernel version: 0.99pl13 0.99pl15 0.99pl15h
C library version 4.4.1 4.5.21 4.5.21
ld.so version: 1.3 1.4.3 1.4.3
libc
) and the dynamic
loader (ld.so
) in the GCC
directory on these sites.
You will need a main memory of at least 8 MB and a virtual memory of at least 16 MB (i.e. main memory + swap). It is possible to run X on a 4 MB machine if you take some precautions on memory usage [cf. tinyX ].Note that you should nevertheless have 16 MB of virtual memory (so if you have 4 megs of physical RAM, you should have 12 megs of swap). It is recommended that you have at least 8 megs of physical RAM, as swaping is very slow. With only 4 megs of physical RAM, performance will suffer greatly. To run X11 comfortably, 8 MB are needed.
If you want to run memory-hog programs from within X (as e.g. gcc
) you
should at least have 16 MB of main memory and another 16MB of swap.
You will need about 17 MB of disk space for the complete installation without LinkKit, 21 MB with LinkKit. By deleting those servers that you don't need and removing the LinkKit after linking your own server, you can save several MB of diskspace.
Before installing XFree86, you should make a backup of all files that you changed. They may not be usable, but they still hold a lot of information you might want to preserve. (Your old XConfig file will not be deleted, but it's allways better to have a backup of this file)
To install the binary distribution you have to do the following as root
with all needed tarfiles from above. For installing XFree86 2.0 (which
is not recommended) you have to do it from /
, for 2.1 or
2.1.1 you have to run first mkdir /usr/X386 ; cd /usr/X386
[cf
Upgrading
].
To get all permissions right you should run umask 022
before
installing it.
gzip -dc tarfilename | tar xvvof -
WARNING: This will overwrite all files from an older XFree86 version, of
course not the Xconfig
file (if you did not link it to
Xconfig.sample
,
which you should not do). In other words, only if Xconfig.sample
is
linked to your Xconfig
, it will be overwritten. Many other files
will be overwritten, though (e.g. the xdm
configuration files, the
system wide twm
configuration file, ...). So you should backup
every file you changed before installing XFree86.
After installing it, you have to set it up correctly to match your system [cf. Setting up XFree86 ].
You do not want to do this. Only if you really want to make
changes to the sources because something is not working you should
consider this. You will need a lot of disk space and CPU time to do a
complete build of the XFree86 system. Anything you need to know for
compiling XFree86 you can find in the following files (to be found in
/usr/X386/lib/X11/etc
): INSTALL, README, and
README.Linux
.
Note that you should not compile XFree86 to get rid of some hardcoded restrictions (e.g. on the maximal pixel clock) as without these restrictions your hardware will probably break down.
To build a server that only includes those drivers you need, you
should use the LinkKit instead of compiling the complete system. This
is much easier. Read /usr/X386/lib/Server/README
for a
description how to do this. This file is not included in the
standard XFree86 tarfiles but is part of the file that includes the
LinkKit. This file is called *-kit*
or *-lkit*
.
For adding drivers to the SVGA servers you will only need the LinkKit.
The documentation how to do this can be found in the
/usr/X386/lib/Server/VGADriverDoc
directory after installing the
LinkKit package.
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