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Jerry Kreps wrote:
It's been my observation and experience that improper x-server configurations account for 99% of troubles newbies have with Linux and Linux apps. Jerry
This is not my experience at all. Missing libs, library incompatibilities, paths, permissions, DISPLAY variables, other env vars, X-resources, and just plain bugs I think account for a larger chunk that X server config problems. I have found that X server config problems account for some very large proportion of the cases of failing to get a GUI to show up on the screen, have a mouse, etc. But once there is a GUI running, the the problems with apps, in my experience (since about kernel 1.2.8 with Slackware) have always been something other than the X server config. Now it is important here to make the distinction between such things as X server config and X resources. I have problems sometimes (Mathematica and in the past, Xterms--though I don't use that anymore since konsole) with X resources. The only case recently where X server configuration (depending how you look at it) has been the cause of application problems is in trying to get Thai to work. I mean to be able to see Thai characters and type Thai characters. There are serious difficulties with this, and they fall into a very strange category. The stock xkb files that come with X 4.0 and 4.1 don't work. Replacing one of them with a hacked up file from an older version gets things to work. Whether you can call this "X server configuration" or not is debatable, as the files that I have had to modify are other than XF86Config and so aren't really a configuration issue. They are a problem of some other sort, perhaps more similar to a bug. More on this later. -- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov