So far we have wandered in the land of the command line interface. It is time to install a graphical interface, don’t you agree? In this post I will show you how I installed and configured X on my Arch Linux installation.

Install X

pacman -S xorg dbus

Edit /etc/rc.conf and add “hal” to the DAEMONS list.

Install and configure input drivers

pacman -S xf86-input-keyboard xf86-input-mouse xf86-input-synaptics

cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-keymap.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/

Edit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi

Find the line that say “… “input.xkb.layout” type=”string”>us” and replace “us” with “no”

Install Video Driver

pacman -S nvidia mesa

Choose “yes” to remove libgl

Install Fonts

pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-cheapskate artwiz-fonts

Reboot

reboot

Test X

startx

X should now start. Type “exit” in the login window to exit X.

So now we know that running X works. Good!

Configure X

nvidia-xconfig --composite --add-argb-glx-visuals

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Update Section “Device” by adding:

• Option “NvAGP” “0″
• Option “NoLogo” “True”
• Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “True”

Update section “Screen”, subsection “Display” by adding:

• Modes “1920×1200″ “1600×1200″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″

Add new section “InputDevice” and add:

• Identifier “Synaptics Touchpad”
• Driver “synaptics”
• Option “SendCoreEvents” “true”
• Option “Device” “/dev/psaux”
• Option “Protocol” “auto-dev”
• Option “SHMConfig” “on”
• Option “HorizScrollDelta” “0″
• Option “MaxTapTime” “180″
• Option “MinTapTime” “50″

Add to section “ServerLayout”:

• InputDevice “Synaptics Touchpad”

Let’s check that X still works:

startx

cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~/.xinitrc

Repeat the above command for all user accounts that you want to use X with.

Further reading at Arch Linux Wiki

• Xorg