Genkernel & Xorg

[hal185]

Hello Forum.

Probably I am not the first one having this question, but I could not find out if there are already threads dealing with this issue.

I recently installed the Gentoo base system following the documentation and I used genkernel (genkernel all). Since I would like to install LXDE I need to install xorg first. In the xorg documentation is said that kernel preparations have to be done before the install (enable evdev, disable KMS etc.).

So my question is if genkernel is already prepared for xorg or do I have to recompile it manually.

And by the way: Is it recommended to install nvidia drivers first or can I do it afterwards?

I am new to gentoo, but eager to learn.

Thank you so much in advance for any help.


Greets,

hal185

[ce110ut]

Hello hal185,

you can install lxde without explicitly installing xorg yourself - emerging lxde will implicitly install it (as it requires xorg and will be in its dependency list).

First, I searched to see if lxde was in portage. I'm pretty sure it's in, but wasn't quite sure what the name of it is:

[hal185]

Hello.

Thank you for your reply. I will give it a shot and post what happened.

hal185

[wcg]

Why would you disable KMS ("kernel mode switching")? Required by
some binary driver package?
_________________
TIA

[hal185]

Hello.

I first installed xorg and got it configured. Then I emerged lxde-meta and after some configuration it worked without any kernel-recompiling. So genkernel did a good job.

@wcg: You're right. I was wrong. The documentation meant legacy framebuffer drivers need to be disabled because of possible conflicts with KMS. So KMS needs to be enabled.

Thank you.

[NeddySeagoon]

hal185,

There is no single answer to your genkernel question.

genkernel works blindly by setting up the kernel from a script, so everyone gets the same thing from genkernel all, regardless of their hardware.

I would expect genkernel to set up the kernel for evdev, as that works everywhere these days. However, video drivers are more complex.
There is no single set of settings that works for all hardware and all Xorg video drivers.
In general, where there is a choice to be made by the user, genkernel does nothing. Thats in line with the rest of Gentoo, where you get only what you ask for and whet you must have to support the packages you have asked for. The converse is also true - in that if you have not yet installed it, you probably don't have it.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[hal185]

Hello NeddySeagoon.

What you write sounds comprehensible. I am glad that the things worked in my case.

Thanks.