Installing and Setting up Xorg

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-init 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!