Running X

At this point, you should be able to type xinit at the prompt and have X Window on your monitor. You have two options in starting X: Use the xinit program or use the startx shell

script. The advantage to using the xinit program is that you can easily start X Window. The advantage to the startx script is that you can make modifications to how the environment variables are treated in bringing up X. With xinit, you are stuck with the defaults. In most cases, the defaults are what you want anyway. The xinit program executes statements in the order they are found in the .xinitrc file.

Once you have set up an XF86Config file, you probably want to run X. This is not done by running X, but by running startx. When running it for the first time, use the command

$ startx 2>&1 > Xstartup.log

This command gets a log file of the X startup by redirecting all output from stdout and stderr to a log file, Xstartup.log. If you encounter problems, the information in this file will help

you get a clue as to what happened.

If you encounter any problems, please look at the XFree86 documentation files in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc. These files provide a lot of information on what to do if problems occur. For more information, also look in the FAQs that are mentioned in those files.

Once you are in the environment of the window manager you chose in the .xinitrc file, you have to conform X Windows System's way of moving around. Please see the next few chapters to learn how to work with windows with three window managers: mwm, olwm, and

fvwm.