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Re: [Sheflug] Help with xorg and gentoo
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Graham" <hl06@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <sheflug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 1:05 AM
> Subject: Re: [Sheflug] Help with xorg and gentoo
>
> What hardware are you planning on using? I'm certainly not a guru, but
> have
> got 3D hardware acceleration working on LTSP terminals (nVidia cards) and
> also with onboard Intel 865 (IIRC) and the latest (£30 mobo) onboard VIA
> Unichrome card systems - normally by banging my head against them for some
> time until they work. I run nothing but Gentoo now (with VMWare when
> necessary).
>
> The "VIDEO_CARDS" entry in /etc/make.conf just saves time compiling for
> every
> card; and I've switched from frugal "USE=" to putting everything which
> might
> be used in to save recompiling all the time. Having only a few USE flags
> always seems to break something later on.
>
> Doubt if I can help re fonts - mine appear fine in most apps, Konqueror
> and
> Firefox - less so with Opera. I followed the UTF-8 Gentoo guide and
> installed
> a few fonts (even the M$ ones), and haven't bothered changing the Opera
> defaults.
>
> I've found xorgcfg to be pretty good starting point once the drivers are
> installed - not used modelines sine RH7.
>
> Regards,
>
> Graham
Thanks Graham. Well the video card is currently an nVidia 6600GT (AGP type),
and the new one will also be Nvidia but PCI-E. Probably around the 7300 or
7600, as I dont really need anything special for gaming.
My current make.conf is like this:
USE="X a52 aac aalib acpi alsa apm bash-completion -bindist bitmap-fonts
bzip2 cdparanoia cdr cracklib crypt dbus dga dio directfb doc dri dvd dvdr
encode exif fam fbcon firefox ftp gif gnome gphoto2 gpm gtk gtk2 ieee1394
java javascript jpeg kerberos logitech-mouse mime mmx mozbranding mp3 msn
ncurses nls nptl nptlonly opengl pdf perl png quicktime readline real sdl
spell sse sse2 ssl svg svga symlink sysvipc tiff truetype truetype-fonts
type1-fonts unicode udev usb v4l v4l2 vcd win32codecs wmf xml xpm xv xvid
zlib"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -Os -fomit-frame-pointer -mmmx -msse -msse2 -mfpmath=sse
-fforce-addr -fno-rename-registers -ftracer -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -fvisibility-inlines-hidden"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="gentoo.blueyonder.co.uk"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
LINGUAS="en"
INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse"
VIDEO_CARDS="fbdev nvidia vesa vga"
ALSA_CARDS="cmipci"
Let me run through it, other than the USE flags, to begin with.
The CFLAGS I have gotten based on looking up the processor details online at
the gcc website, and the Gentoo forums where smart people have published
go-faster guides. I settled for -Os in the end as a good all rounder. These
have always worked fine, but I'll need to change them when I get the new
system built. Possibly (Hopefully) there will be a new gcc version by then
as well, which has optimisation flags for the Core2Duo chips; right now
there are a lot of discussions going on about which -march should be used
and which flags, but no official guides or recommendations.
The CHOST, as always, leave well alone.
CXXFLAGS, I added the -fvisibility-inlines-hidden, as per an optimisation
guide in the Gentoo forums, and has always worked well. Note when I first
added this, for some reason I spelt it as -fINvisibilty-inlines-hidden.
Thats one way to get some seriously odd messages!
GENTOO_MIRRORS is based on my own ISP and is very fast indeed.
PORTDIR_OVERLAY is the only local directory I added, as I have sometimes
used custom ebuilds which need to live there. All of the other local folders
work fine as they are.
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86". I have sometimes switched between the two on this
(~x86 and x86), but never on the same system. Things break otherwise. ~x86
is my own preference as a rule.
MAKEOPTS="-j2", as per the official Gentoo guides, number of physical
processors + 1.
LINGUAS="en" is something I added more recently. I have seen varying reports
of using this one; in some packages en actually means English. In others en
means English-US, and en_GB means British. en seems to work ok at the moment
though, and all keys are where they should be.
INPUT_DEVICES and VIDEO_CARDS came from when X switched to the newer modular
builds, and came recommended in a lot of places. Fairly straight forward
here, but I added vesa, vga and fbdev purely as fallbacks in case there was
a problem with the latest and greatest nVidia driver. Extra compile time for
these is minimal anyway.
ALSA_CARDS is something I have used for a long time and does seem to make
the sound system run a little more consistently, even though the card is
defined in the kernel config, and shows as expected in dmesg.
Now to the use flags. Well what is shown above is my current set. As I
mentioned in my first post, these have been derived from the very original
make.conf I lifted from a webpage some years ago, and then modified as time
has gone on.
The most obvious ones (for me) being "X nptl nptlonly alsa apm dvd
dvdrieee1394 mmx sse sse2 sysvipc unicode" Then I added the font related
ones "-bindist" (to get bci), "bitmap-fonts truetype truetype-fonts
type1-fonts" as per the Gentoo fonts guide. Different guides mention using
truetype or truetype-fonts so I added them both to be on the safe side.
The majority of the other stuff in there is all codec and media type
related, and where I have found stuff in the forums that says something
along the lines of 'Using this flag will help with such and such package'.
The USE flags overall still look rather messy to me, but with conflicting
definitions in the local use.desc, use.local.desc and the online listings,
Im at a sticking point on it now. The recent problems with circular
dependencies that have been reported in the Gentoo forums all suggest adding
or removing different flags too, which doesnt really help a lot. Actually,
these problems are beginning to feel circular in themselves!
:)
Steve.
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