G4, ATI 128, X Serve Problems

[Robert Persson]

The GUI is actually known as an X-Server (it's a server because it provides 
screen, keyboard and mouse services to other programs).  Other terms used 
are xfree86 or just X. X-Serve is a server manufactured by Apple, if I'm 
not mistaken.

I don't know the answer to your problem, but I would suggest the following 
steps:

1. You could try editing /etc/X11/XF86Config by hand.  Remember to save 
your old XF86Config first.  The sections which deal with your card begin 
'Section "Device"' and 'Section "Screen"'.  You might find that setting a 
default colour depth of 15, not 16, works, or will at least enable you to 
get slightly better performance from fbdev.  It depends on your card.  I 
think the ati driver is called "aty".  You can get more information by 
typing "man XF86Config", or browsing http://xfree86.org.

2. You could also try sending the output of startx to a file, e.g. "startx 
> somepathorother/startxmessages" and then paste startxmessages to this 
list to see if anybody can make sense of it (if it's not too long).  That 
might be a good bet in the first instance.

Robert

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 08:19:57 -0700 (PDT), Lindsey <yesdnile@yahoo.com> 
wrote:

> Hi, I have a 400 MHz G4 with an AGP ATI rage 128 card. I just installed 
> linux last week (and so am very green). I can't get X serve (I think this 
> is what the GUI is called) to work well. I followed the "How to" 
> instructions on terrasoft's site. However, the only configuration where I 
> can get XServe to lauch is when I set the device in the X configuration 
> file to fbdev and the depth to 8. Any other setting (using the ati driver 
> which XAutoCong detects, or changing the color depth to 16) does not 
> work, I get a fatal error and sent back to the command line. I was 
> wondering if anyone who had solved this problem could lend me some help.
> Thanks,
> Lindsey
>