Setting up X-Windows

FreeBSD 4.x: using xf86cfg

• Prerequisite: install a distribution with X support, such as X-Developer (go back to /stand/sysintall -> Post-Install Conf -> Distributions if you did not do this during the initial installation).
• Newer releases (e.g. 4.7) include a nice configuration tool, xf86cfg, with robust auto-detection. Run this tool for the first time and go through the menus. It is a bit unintuitive, but it works well. First, right-click on each graphical representation of the system elements (e.g. monitor) and select configure. You may need to go visit support.dell.com to find out the parameters of the monitor and the graphics card in the system. If you are not sure about the graphics card, do *not* configure it (auto-detection is usually fine). Using the drop-down box in the upper-left corner, configure monitor modes and resolutions. Quit after everything is configured and say "Yes" in the two save file dialogs. If everything went well, you can just run startx and use X right away.
• Otherwise, you need to reconfigure, and that involves knowing a couple of things about xf86cfg. xf86cfg always creates a sample configuration file under /root/XF86Config.new. This provides a minimal configuration file. After you run xf86cfg (and say "yes" in the two dialogs mentioned before), the configuration file you created will be at /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config (by default). You can modify this file using

  xf86cfg -xf86config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config

  You can also overwrite this file with the /root/XF86Config.new (this should almost always work, so it will help determine whether you made a configuration mistake when you created /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config or something is wrong with the card or the monitor).
• You can also manually edit XF86Config. See the man page for some help. I usually change the default mode by reordering the modes added using xf86cfg.
• You probably want some nice window manager. I recommend Window Maker if you want something light-weight, or KDE (or Gnome) if you want a fully featured desktop. You can install new desktops using /stand/sysinstall. Window Maker is specially easy: install the base wmaker package and its dependencies with pkg_add and then run wmaker.inst to create all the required configuration files. Run startx and your wmaker desktop will quickly show up.

Old FAQ Page of Setup X

Booting up to X-Windows

If you always work with X-Windows, you can directly boot you machine to a graphical login prompt by enabling xdm. You just need to modify /etc/ttys and change the line with xdm from off to on. The result should look like

ttyv8 /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon xterm off secure -- /etc/ttys