3. Installing XFree86

It's quite likely that you obtained XFree86 as part of a Linux distribution, in which case downloading the software separately is not necessary. Or you may be able to get RPM binary packages built for your machine, in which case you can just install those using rpm(1). In either case you can skip this the rest of this section.

The Linux binary distribution of XFree86 can be found on a number of FTP sites. On the XFree86 site it's at ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/current/binaries/Linux-ix86 (As of the time of this writing, the current version is 3.2A; newer versions are released periodically).

Before doing anything else, download and run the `preinst.sh' shell script first. This may tell you about prerequisites you'll need to have in place before contibuing your installation.

If you are downloading XFree86 directly, this table lists the files in the XFree86-3.3 distribution.

One of the following servers is required:

X338514.tgz

Server for 8514-based boards.

X33AGX.tgz

Server for AGX-based boards.

X33I128.tgz

Server for the Number Nine Imagine 128.

X33Mach32.tgz

Server for Mach32-based boards.

X33Mach64.tgz

Server for Mach64-based boards.

X33Mach8.tgz

Server for Mach8-based boards.

X33Mono.tgz

Server for monochrome video modes.

X33P9K.tgz

Server for P9000-based boards.

X33S3.tgz

Server for S3-based boards.

X33S3V.tgz

Server for the S3 ViRGE and ViRGE/VX (considered beta)

X33SVGA.tgz

Server for Super VGA-based boards.

X33W32.tgz

Server for ET4000/W32-based boards.

All of the following files are required:

preinst.sh

Pre-installation script

postinst.sh

Post-installation script

X33bin.tgz

The rest of the X11R6 binaries.

X33cfg.tgz

Config files for xdm, xinit and fs.

X33doc.tgz

Documentation.

X33man.tgz

Manual pages.

X33fnts.tgz

75dpi, misc and PEX fonts

X33lib.tgz

Shared X libraries and support files.

X33set.tgz

XF86Setup utility.

X33VG16.tgz

Server for VGA/EGA-based boards.

The following files are optional:

X33f100.tgz

100dpi fonts

X33fcyr.tgz

Cyrillic fonts

X33fnon.tgz

Other fonts (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew)

X33fscl.tgz

Scalable fonts (Speedo and Type1)

X33fsrv.tgz

Font server and config files

X33prog.tgz

X header files, config files and compile-time libs

X33lkit.tgz

X server LinkKit

X33lk98.tgz

PC98 X server LinkKit

X33nest.tgz

Nested X server

X33prt.tgz

X print server

X33vfb.tgz

Virtual framebuffer X server

X33ps.tgz

PostScript version of the documentation

X33html.tgz

HTML version of the documentation

The XFree86 directory should contain release notes for the current version in RELNOTES. Consult those for installation details

All that is required to install XFree86 is to obtain the above files, create the directory /usr/X11R6 (as root), and unpack the files from /usr/X11R6 with a command such as:

gzip -dc X33bin.tgz | tar xfB -

You need to make sure that /usr/X11R6/bin is on your path. This can be done by editing your system default /etc/profile or /etc/csh.login (based on the shell that you, or other users on your system, use). Or you can simply add the directory to your personal path by modifying .bashrc or .cshrc, based on your shell.

You also need to make sure that /usr/X11R6/lib can be located by ld.so, the runtime linker. To do this, add the line

/usr/X11R6/lib