X configuration

Overview of contents
The /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file holds configuration information for the XF86 windowing system. This includes information on the keyboard, mouse, monitor, and video card, as well as some special options for resolution, fancy graphics display, and multi-headed systems. The file is broken up into sections such as  for mice and keyboards,   for monitors, and just plain   for video cards themselves. The  section has meta information about combining all the pieces together correctly.

We are going to have to deal with this file most often because magix somehow fails to create it correctly. In these situations, we need to make small tweaks to fix things.

How to edit the file
Using nano or another command line editor as root, you open up the file:

Then you'll need to look for what you have to change. One common change is the video driver, for instance from  to   (closed source to open source drivers for nVidia cards). Look through the file until you find the  section, and change the value of the   line to match the correct driver. Another common change is the default color depth, which is under the  section, on a line labeled.

Make your changes and save the file, then quit out of the editor. As root, you'll want to try to start X again, which you accomplish by:

If this doesn't work again, check the log file:

and try again.

For more information, type:

at the command line.