Basic Xorg-7 Software Introduction

Xorg is a freely redistributable, open-source implementation of the X Window System. This system provides a client/server interface between display hardware (the mouse, keyboard, and video displays) and the desktop environment, while also providing both the windowing infrastructure and a standardized application interface (API).

This section however doesn't install the Xorg server, but instead installs basic software that a lot of software depends on, including the Xorg server, compositors, and window managers/desktop environments, as well as xwayland — a necessary part of Wayland if you want to use Xorg only software. This includes Steam-1.0.0.82 and Wine-9.21.

Xorg Download and Installation Instructions

Xorg-7.0 introduced a completely auto-tooled, modular build system. With the new modular build system, it is no longer possible to download the entire package in a single file. In fact, there will be well over 100 packages that need to be fetched from the download location. To assist with such a large task, installing Wget-1.25.0 is strongly recommended for downloading the needed files. A complete wget file list is provided for each page that includes multiple packages.

Given the number of packages available, deciding which packages you need to install for your particular setup may seem a bit overwhelming at first. Take a look at this page and this thread to get an idea of what you will need. If you are unsure, you should install all packages at the cost of extra disk space.

Note

Even if you intend to download only the necessary packages, you should download the wget file lists. The list of files are ordered by dependency, and the package versions listed in the files are known to work well with each other. Further, the wget file lists contain comments for specific packages that are deprecated or are not recommended to install. Newer packages are likely intended for the next release of Xorg and have already proved to be incompatible with current versions of software installed in GLFS. The installed size of Xorg can be reduced considerably by installing only the packages that you will need and use, however, the GLFS book cannot account for all dependencies and build options for the individual Xorg packages. The instructions assume that all packages have been built.

Additionally, because of the large number of repetitive commands, you are encouraged to partially automate the build. Instructions have been given that utilize the sudo package. It is recommended that you use the :NOPASSWD configuration option for the user that will be building the xorg packages. There are other accommodations in the off chance you didn't install it. You can use the su utility, invoking -c . This requires that you enter your password each time a package needs to get installed. The last accommodation is allow you to build and install each package as the root user. This is not recommended but is an option if you don't want to install sudo and don't want to type a password again and again.

Setting up the Xorg Build Environment

Set the XORG_PREFIX variable for compatibility with BLFS with the following command:

export XORG_PREFIX="/usr"

Note

The XORG_PREFIX variable will not be used in this book, but it is a necessary variable to set if you intend to follow certain BLFS instructions. If you aren't just copy and pasting BLFS instructions, you may do without the variable but be sure to replace the variable in the instructions with /usr.

Throughout these instructions, you will use the following configure switches for all of the packages. Create the XORG_CONFIG variable to use for this parameter substitution:

export XORG_CONFIG="--prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc \
    --localstatedir=/var --disable-static"

Note

The instructions below depend on the files created in The Bash Shell Startup Files.

Create an /etc/profile.d/xorg.sh configuration file containing these variables as the root user:

cat > /etc/profile.d/xorg.sh << EOF
XORG_PREFIX="/usr"
XORG_CONFIG="--prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --disable-static"
export XORG_PREFIX XORG_CONFIG
EOF
chmod 644 /etc/profile.d/xorg.sh

If you've installed sudo, ensure that XORG_CONFIG is available in the sudo environment. As the root user, run the following command:

cat > /etc/sudoers.d/xorg << EOF
Defaults env_keep += XORG_CONFIG
EOF