Xorg is necessary for a window manager or desktop environment to run. This guide will tell you how to set it up.

Installing Xorg

There are various commands required to install Xorg. The base Xorg will require: pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xf86-input-mouse xf86-input-keyboard Xorg also requires your graphics card driver, many of which are open source. To find out what graphics card you have, type lspci | grep Display It should show something like this: 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) The package you will need will be like "xf86-video-brand". So Intel cards are "xf86-video-intel". If I wanted to install it, I would run pacman -S xf86-video-intel

For ATI users

Run pacman -S catalyst

For NVIDIA users

Run pacman -S nvidia or if you graphics card is older, run pacman -S nvidia-71xx or pacman -S nvidia-96xx depending on your output of lspci. Look at the version number.

Configuring Xorg

We will need to install hwd, a program that highly simplifies the process of setting up your xorg.conf (Xorg's configuration file). Install it by typing pacman -S hwd And run hwd -xa Your xorg.conf will now be generated!

For ATI users

When you have installed Catalyst, you can run aticonfig --initial This will set up your xorg.conf for it.

For NVIDIA users

When you have installed the NVIDIA drivers, run nvidia-xconfig This will optimize your xorg.conf. Now you can go onto installing your favourite window manager or desktop environment!