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X11/Xorg was the default on many distros, so often it was preconfigured in a working state. I started my Linux journey around...2004? And booting into Mandrake
by jyrkesh 7y ago
X11/Xorg was the default on many distros, so often it was preconfigured in a working state. I started my Linux journey around...2004? And booting into Mandrake or Slackware (or a Knoppix Live CD, my true beginning), X would work fine. But as soon as I had to install it myself (minimal Fedora, minimal Debian, or my fave, stage 1 Gentoo), I'd hit all kinds of issues with configuration and starting the X server.
As a counterpoint, I tried to set up Wayland a couple years back on Ubuntu and Fedora before it was default anywhere, and that was also a nightmare.
It's easy to forget sometimes just how much the distro maintainers make our lives easier.
- Decade 7y agoXorg has definitely become easier to configure. Back in the old days, you had to write the XF86Config file, either manually or automatically during installation, or else it wouldn’t do anything. These days, Xorg auto-detects everything and you only need an xorg.conf if you’re doing something weird.
- jyrkesh 7y agoYeah, back then I was using one of the glorious Trinitrons at 75 Hz and 1600x1200. To work at all, I had to manually look up the horizontal and vertical sync ranges and put 'em in the XF86Config.