Xorg Setup

If you came here from the last section, we just finished installing FreeBSD on our system and updating our Ports tree. If we were planning to use our FreeBSD system as a server, we might be in good shape, but this guide is for setting up FreeBSD to use as a client (desktop) OS.

Although we already have a complete operating system installed, at this point our system can only be used in text mode. Most people would not be satisfied with that, so we're going to walk you through setting up X11. X is the display engine of UNIX and UNIX-like Operating Systems. (Mac OS X uses Quartz, aka Display PDF, as its native display engine, but can also use X11).

X doesn't actually give you a "desktop" in the sense you're used to if you previously used Mac or Windows. X is responsible for "drawing" objects to be displayed. The actual GUI (Graphic User Interface) you'll be interacting with will be one of many Window Managers you'll have to choose from. The Window Manager is the "desktop environment" you'll see, but X11 will be behind the scenes drawing everything.

Ok, that wasn't a very good explanation and if you're confused now don't worry about it. The important thing is that if we want to have a graphical interface, we need to configure X. We'll cover window managers a bit later.

First things first we need to install Xorg. This will take awhile (more to download than anything) so you'll probably want to go do something else for awhile. Make sure you're root:

NOTE: the configuration utility is going to ask you for some information about your computer hardware, so make sure you have this information handy! Specifically, you'll need to know what type of video card your computer has and the amount of video memory (this is NOT the same as your RAM or computer memory), as well as your monitor's horizontal sync rate and vertical refresh rate. If you can't find this information, either in the documentation that came with your computer, online or my contacting your computer vender, you might be able to get away with making a few assumptions. First, nearly all video cards are VESA 2 compliant, so it should be possible to use the generic "vesa" display driver if you don't know what kind of video card you have (or can't find an appropriate driver for it on the list). Second, if you don't know your monitor's horizontal sync rate and vertical refresh rate, guess LOW, i.e. choose a range that is BELOW the capabilities of your monitor. If you choose a range that is beyond the capabilities of your monitor, you WILL have problems.

This is the first screen that should appear after executing the "xorgconfig" command. Press 'Enter' to continue.

This is the next screen you should see. Just like it says, you'll probably want to type "1" for Auto. Press 'Enter' to continue.

The page will then scroll down a little to ask you a new question. We said "n", as we have a mouse with 3 buttons. If you have a mouse with only 2 buttons, go ahead and say "y". You will then be able to use the 3rd (middle) button by pressing your left and right mouse buttons simultaneously. Just FYI, the third mouse button is used to paste highlighted text.

If you have a laptop or ps2 mouse then you will want to type "/dev/psm0" here. Otherwise if you have a usb mouse it will be "/dev/ums0" for this value.

pc104 is a very standard keyboard, featuring keys with a logo from one nameless company. Fortunately, we can put those keys to use later. So we chose "3".

Our keyboard is US English, or "1". If you don't see your country hit enter to see more options.

Default is fine, just hit 'Enter'.

Don't worry about these settings, just say "n".

Now we're going to give the configuration utility some information about our monitor. Press 'Enter' to continue.