Re: off-topic question:

[Toralf Lund <toralf kscanners com>]

> > The downside to doing this, of course, is that since the RPM system thinks
> > you have a different version installed with different files,
> > removing/upgrading core X RPMs from then on would be a problem.  But I
> plan
> > to reinstall my whole system when Mandrake 7.1 comes out, which uses
> XFree86
> > 4.x, so I don't see much of a problem with that.  And of course if the
> > future X RPMs are written well, you should be able to upgrade without much
> > hassle, even after you use the binary tarballs.
> >
> > It is common knowledge, however (well, I'm TOLD its common knowledge, but
> > common knowledge really isn't my area ~,^ ) that the Rawhide RPMs don't
> work
> > for the majority of people.
>
> Bullshit! I once used for my home computer a RawHide distribution (actually,
> I just downloaded all the RawHide RPMS and manually upgraded a minimal
> installation). Stop giving RedHat and Rawhide a bad name :) If it doesn't
> work for you, then you obviously broke something ;)
>
> Anyway, I use the XFree86 4.0 RPMS. They worked flawlessly from just
> rpm -Uvh'ing - The only tip I can provide - Don't forget to run 'xf86cfg' -
> I had to run it several times in order to get it 'just right' for my system.
> I also then proceeded to install the NVidia drivers, and then I upgraded to
> the latest kernel. It all works.

I'm pretty sure that the first XFree86 4.0 RPMs that appeared on RawHide did
not work, but the ones that are there now seem to be OK. If you have RPMs with
release number 0.4, you definitely want to upgrade to 0.12! Note that rpm -U
may mess up your xfs configuration, though, so it may be a good idea to take a
backup of /etc/X11/fs/config before you start (rpm may not keep the old version
if you haven't made manual changes.) Also, configuration was not straight
forward for me, but perhaps the RPMs would have tried to keep the old setup if
I hadn't been stupid enough to overwrite it in an attempt to get the old
release to work. xf86cfg fails with the following messages:

indonesia 3# xf86cfg
Warning: Cannot convert string "mouse.xbm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "keyboard.xbm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "card.xbm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "monitor.xbm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "computer.xpm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "keyboard.xpm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "mouse.xpm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "card.xpm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "monitor.xpm" to type Pixmap
Warning: Cannot convert string "card" to type Widget
Warning: Cannot convert string "back" to type Widget
Error: Widget monitor has zero width and/or height

- Toralf