Re: [gentoo-user] xorg-server

[Mick]

On Thursday 30 December 2010 17:40:18 Mike Edenfield wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-12-29 at 13:01 +0000, Mick wrote:
> > Personally, I can't see why all these additional config files and
> > locations are required, rather than a single /etc/X11/xorg.conf.  I have
> > found all these back and forth changes to fdi's, xorg.conf.d and what
> > have you, unnecessary and annoyingly time wasting.
> >
> > Of course I might have missed something simple in all this kerfuffle, so
> > please chime in if there is a better way around this.
>
> If all you are worried about is making your touchpad work in X, and
> you're willing to pull it up in a text editor every time you need to
> make a change, then no, you didn't really miss anything.

Well, it's the touch pad and keyboard on two laptops, both of which seem to 
not have liked evdev defaults, or modifying xorg.conf, or adding options to 
the evdev file itself, or adding options to the 50-synaptics.conf file, or a 
10-keyboard.conf file that I created.

On the other hand, with a desktop the transition to 1.9 two months or so ago 
just worked™.

> The purpose of xorg.conf.d is to allow packages/utilities/etc to drop in
> changes to your X config seamlessly, as in, without the user being
> required to take any specific action.  For example, the synaptics input
> driver drops a 50-synaptics.conf file into your xorg.conf.d that
> includes a simple "this is a touchpad" configuration, which would take
> effect just by restarting X.

Are you talking about the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory or the 
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ which I created on my own?  I was hoping that any 
additions in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ would take precedence over settings in 
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and survive an update, but the two seem to clash 
and cause erratic behaviour.


> The purpose of udev is to configure all of the hardware on your system,
> not just for X.  It's how GNOME/KDE/whatever is able to automount your
> USB key when it shows up, and knows that /dev/sr0 is a dvd-rom drive,
> etc. Just as with HAL, using udev to configure X-specific options is
> probably overkill. In theory, other GUI systems besides X could just as
> easily read the x11 options from udev and use them. Since there isn't
> really any such alternative, the practical benefits of udev over a
> monolithic xorg.conf file mostly vanish.

Yes it does make sense, but I sort of objected to tweaking udev rules because 
I'm thinking the clash is not between devices, but between xf86 drivers.

Anyhow, I'm happy I got it working regardless.  :-)
-- 
Regards,
Mick