[CentOS-devel] Rebuild xorg

Sun Dec 21 22:30:49 UTC 2008
Matej Cepl <mcepl at redhat.com>

On 2008-12-20, 21:47 GMT, Alain PORTAL wrote:
> I just installed and fully updated Centos 5.2 on my laptop.
> Unfortunately, this one need at least the version 6.8.0 of the=20
> xorg-x11-drv-ati (available in Fedora 9), and this driver need=20
> xorg-x11-server-Xorg >=3D 1.4.99.1 :-(

I think basically you need to rebuild all xorg-x11* packages plus 
whatever they depend on (mainly from lib* packages). And you 
would need to stay with F9 packages, because for F10 you would 
also need new kernel. It is a huge undertaking and I am not sure 
whether it is worthy of the effort.  

> So, I need to rebuild many things if I want to use centos on my 
> laptop, and I want to use it!

Strictly speaking that's not correct. You have two more options:

a) To stick with CentOS and when on CentOS do as CentOS people do 
-- that is use vesa driver (system-config-display and set vesa 
driver). Of course, you won't have 3D, compiz and similar shiny 
stuff, but it should work pretty reliably for applications which 
don't need this (which is most of them).

Actually, what happens when you move /etc/X11/xorg.conf away and 
restart X? At least since Fedora 6 (i.e., pre-RHEL5 days) it is 
considered a bug when Xorg without xorg.conf won't start in 
a working state.

b) Of course, least painful solution is probably to try Fedora 10 
-- I fully understand that you want to have CentOS for stability, 
but well, this is a desktop, and you should be able to get 
support until (hopefully) RHEL6 will be out.

Best,

Matěj