Xorg.conf and basic KDE setup done!

The Xorg config was only as difficult as adding the requisite lines from my PCLOS file. I wonder whether I might need to tweak the file a bit later, but for now if it works I’m not going to mess with it.

I created and tested my file using Forrest Sheng Bao’s advice, beginning where he specifies Xorg -configure to generate a test file, and including his steps for testing the edited file.

I edited the file with edit xorg.conf.new

If anyone is curious as to what the relevant sections are for an Optiquest Q22WB, which is a 16×10 flatpanel, these are the lines I used, which are at least good enough to get things running:

First, the Monitor section. The biggest difference here was just specifying the refresh rates. I’d imagine it wouldn’t hurt to fill in the vendor name and model number, but it seems like that doesn’t really matter at this point.

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0″
ModelName “1680×1050 @ 60 Hz”
HorizSync 31.5-48.5
VertRefresh 50-70
EndSection

Now the Screen section. Differences vs the autogenerated xorg file are the DefaultColorDepth setting, and all the resolutions specified.

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen0″
Device “Card0″
Monitor “Monitor0″
DefaultColorDepth 24

Subsection “Display”
Depth 8
Modes “1680×1050″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “640×480″ “480×360″ “320×240″
EndSubsection

Subsection “Display”
Depth 15
Modes “1680×1050″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “640×480″ “480×360″ “320×240″
EndSubsection

Subsection “Display”
Depth 16
Modes “1680×1050″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “640×480″ “480×360″ “320×240″
EndSubsection

Subsection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1680×1050″ “1024×768″ “832×624″ “800×600″ “640×480″ “480×360″ “320×240″
EndSubsection
EndSection

Well, that was easy. Shockingly so.

KDE turned out to be even easier.

Just startkdm from the command line, answer 5 questions, and you are looking looking at the default KDE 3.5.4 desktop. I do have a few small snags –

1) The fonts are kind of ugly, as I’ve come to expect from any default *nix install. No problem, I expect to have to mess with them at some point.

2) I’m only running 1152×786 resolution, which is the highest resolution that the KDE Control Center is offering to provide. This surprised me a little bit, given that I only specified 1680×1050 in my xorg.conf, but even this is something I’ll probably let go while I get other basic things working. This may be aggravating the font issue.

3) I can’t do much of anything. I neglected to put my user into the “wheel” group, which means I can’t do anything requiring su. So, it’s back to google to find out how to do that. I suspect that I could run sysinstall again, but I also suspect that there’s a more direct way to get it done.

OK, a bit more googling has solved problem number 3 for me — peeking at the relevant section of the FreeBSD Handbook made it clear that I needed to adjust /etc/group. A quick peek with edit /etc/group showed that it looked easy enough, but I wasn’t about to go mucking about in there without clear instructions.

I found those here. Just a comma and my username in the most obvious and logical place for them to go. Wow. I have a sincere respect for the simplicity of this approach. When you are all done, it lookslike this:

wheel:*:0:root,yourusername

That’s it for today, but I’m pretty happy with this progress. Everything I did here would have taken about 10 minutes if I had actually known what I was doing. Even so, it only took maybe 20, including the time I spent googling.

Unless I realize I’ve forgotten something, my next step will be to tackle Wireless (including WPA-PSK), and then I’ll try to figure out how to install the DesktopBSD metapackage that I saw referenced somewhere on the forums.

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