How do I set up the X Window System?

There are many ways to set up X. If you're not using XFree86, you'll probably need to check your specific documentation for more information.

If you're using XFree86 (the standard X server that comes with the three most common variants of Linux), then you should first determine what kind of hardware you have and its capabilities (including video RAM, monitor vertical and horizontal scan rates and resolution). If you want to eek the best possible performance out of your hardware, you will need Eric S. Raymond's excellent howto on writing modelines, and the following data about your monitor:

• Maximum bandwidth (dot clock) (MHz)
• Maximum horizontal scan rate (kHz)
• Maximum vertical scan rate (Hz)
• Horizontal front porch (us)
• Horizontal back porch (us)
• Vertical front porch (us)
• Vertical back porch (us)
• Horizontal sync pulse width (us)
• Vertical sync pulse width (us)

Don't worry if you can't get all these data, the howto shows you how to approximate some of these figures. The more correct data you can get, the better the result will be.

Why all this important? Modelines define the refresh rate (flicker) and resolution of your display. While most of us want as high of each as we can get away with, my experience shows that you do not want to exceed the specifications of your hardware because one of two things can happen: worst case, you can damage your equipment, but almost all modern equipment just looks blurred and generally unreadable the further out of spec you get.

If you don't feel confident in the information you have, settle on a very conservative set of data and get it going with that first.

After you've done this, you can execute xf86config. This will write out a syntactically correct configuration file. If you installed it, there is a graphical version of this called XF86Setup. This is the better option, if you have it available.

Read the XFree86 howto.

You should now be able to type startx, and if all has gone well (i.e., you gave xf86config the correct information), you'll be running X.

If you're running Red Hat Linux, you can also try Xconfigurator, which is more user-friendly than xf86config, but in my opinion, less so than XF86Setup.