Need Arch installation advice, please.

[McCordRM]

First, here's the important aspects of my system.
CPU: Intel X6800
Video: Radeon HD 4890
Monitor: Dell 2407WFP


So, the end result I'm shooting for is:
Desktop with an Avant (or Avant-type) dock bar.

That's it.
Individual programs I view as being seperate from the System, itself. I can
change those on a whim. The System, itself, I view as the filesystem and
GUI for said filesystem. I don't need KDE or Gnone. By that, I mean other options
are encouraged.

I should point out that I'm looking for options because Xorg has me at a
roadblock. I can't get it to work no matter what I try. So if there's another
option, I'd love to hear it. OR, if you have a better way to install it than what
I've gotten from the official Beginner's Guide and Wikis... point me in the right
direction.

[reed9]

You'll have to have Xorg to have a graphical interface, including avant. I think you'll also need to have a compositing window manager for avant to work correctly, since you need true transparency enabled, though rumor has it in version 4.0+ that is no longer required.

Perhaps you should run through what you've done so far and what's failing. I would wager the issue is your radeon graphics card. The HD 4890 should work using the open source ati driver, but that does not yet support 3D hardware acceleration. Which driver are you using? Are you using an xorg.conf file? If so, post it.

[McCordRM]

Well, I finally got Arch up and running.
I went with XFCE4 and used the Avant dock bar.

It looked like crap. Is it because I went with XFCE? My video options looked fine:
correct resolution of 1900x1200 at 60hz. I had xf86-video-ati installed. The screen
just wasn't very sharp and crisp... it was more blurry.

[reed9]

Like the fonts are fuzzy? There are some options to tweak them.

Fonts - ArchWiki

Font Configuration - ArchWiki

[McCordRM]

Yea... but it was like my DPI was off or something. The rest of the windows had
that same feel to them. My wallpaper was fine, though. Pfft.

Anyhow, I'm currently doing a re-install to touch up the guide I'm writing. I may
go with Gnome this time.

[reed9]

It may be the DPI was too low. Try forcing it to 96 DPI. Info on the xorg wiki.