Change from XFree86 to X.org?

[TruthSeeker]

I seem to have ended up with XFree86 instead of X11, I don't remember being given the choice. It seems various things I need require X11 though... So how do I change? Do I just remove the XF86 packages and install the X11 ones? It seems to be a rather major system change, so I wanted to check before screwing everything up...

[dylunio]

Erm...(correct me if I'm wrong) but both XF86 and Xorg are X11 (I have both undor /etc/X11 on a distro that uses Xorg and a distro that uses XF86). You should be able to use apt-get to get the latest xserver that debian offer...

[Gnux]

Personnally I've seen nothing too when I upgrade my sid and Xorg was entering in...at the reboot I have to reconfigure two or three things but that' s all really smooth
Indeed like dylunio said u always got X11 simply ur config file is: /etc/X11/xorg.conf

[St. Joe]

I seem to have ended up with XFree86 instead of X11, I don't remember being given the choice. It seems various things I need require X11 though... So how do I change?

You must mean Xorg. It is a drop-in replacement for XFree86.
Meaning you only need to dist-upgrade and it will be installed.

Your settings for XFree86 are carried over so no need to reconfig.
If any problems:

# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

[TruthSeeker]

Thanks. I saw a Debian package called x11-common which seemed to be part of X.org... that's what confused me. So I'll be getting xserver-xorg. I don't quite see what the point of dist-upgrade is, though.

[St. Joe]

So I'll be getting xserver-xorg. I don't quite see what the point of dist-upgrade is, though.

'dist-upgrade' allows apt to pull in for dependencies those packages which are needed up completely update your system, but which are not presently installed. A simple 'apt-get upgrade' will not do this.

[TruthSeeker]

I don't see why you can't just get the xserver-xorg package normally and let the dependencies take care of themselves... which is what I did. It worked fine, now I've got xorg. Now my graphics card (ATI Radeon 7000) is working, at least a lot better than before... my modern laptop is no longer slower with 3d graphics than my 5-year-old desktop! Now my question is, does X.org do all that's necessary (or possible) for the gfx card, or should I still install DRI (as I had been planning)? If so, how, since there's no package?

[St. Joe]

I don't see why you can't just get the xserver-xorg package normally and let the dependencies take care of themselves...

You can do this, of course. There's not much point in using dist-upgrade if only working with a single meta-pkg. That command is intended for a system wide upgrade.

...should I still install DRI (as I had been planning)? If so, how, since there's no package?

Install DRI? AFAIK the option to include that in your xorg.conf is presented during the X configuration session during the intitial installation of those packages. At least, that is what it offered to me when I did the upgrade.

[TruthSeeker]

I don't recall being asked about it in installing xorg, or in installing Debian, but the following is in my xorg.conf

Section "DRI"
        Mode    0666
EndSection

so I guess it's installed. Before I switched to xorg, I tried tuxracer (3d game) and got about 1 frame per second :o Now, though, its window is just black and X completely hangs... ctrl+alt+F1, ctrl+alt+bksp, nothing works... I press the power button and the system shuts down. Other 3D apps like Blender work fine though... Is something maybe configured wrong? Thanks for the help so far...

[chopin1810]

Erm...(correct me if I'm wrong) but both XF86 and Xorg are X11 (I have both undor /etc/X11 on a distro that uses Xorg and a distro that uses XF86). You should be able to use apt-get to get the latest xserver that debian offer...

I thought they were the same too, but xf86 is older, harder to configure, and has less newer documentation.