system-config-display

So far so good we have been doing things the hard way. Fedora provides a very simple tool that takes a lot of the hard work out of configuring X. The tool is “system-config-display”. The tool will help you create a usable xorg.conf file. There are of course times when you might still need to go under the hood yourself and further fine-tune the configuration file for X.

To automatically configure X

1. Log in to the system as root from the first virtual terminal.

2. Run Fedora’s X configuration utility. Type:

root@localhost root# system-config-display

Select the “Hardware” tab at the screen below.




3. Click the “Configure” button under the “Monitor Type” section.

4. Select your monitor make and model from the list of monitors in the “Monitor” window that appears.
The best source of information for your particular hardware will be the manufacturer supplied
manual, but in the absence of a reliable specification sheet for your display you can try one of the
generic models with a low resolution.



Click “OK” when done.

5. Next click the “Configure” button under the “Video Card” section.

6. Scroll through the list of available video cards and select the video card for your system (Again, you
may have to consult the documentation for your hardware to obtain the correct information)



Click “OK” when done.

7. Click the “Settings” tab at the main screen to adjust your resolution and/or “color depth” to suit your
hardware setup (choose low values whenever you are in doubt).

8. Finally click “OK” again at the main screen, to save and accept your changes. Click “OK” at the
informational dialog box that pops open.

9. You will now undo the changes you made earlier in exercise 1, by configuring your system to boot
into runlevel 5 (GUI environment) instead of runlevel 3. Open up the “/etc/inittab” file with any text
editor you are comfortable with.

10. Look for a line in the file that looks like the one below:

id:3:initdefault:

Edit the above line to look like the one below. i.e. change the value of the 2nd field from 3 to 5.

id:5:initdefault:

This will make the system boot up into runlevel 5 henceforth. This forces the system to henceforth automatically start the X server.

11. Save your changes to the file and close it. Reboot the system when done.

12. Enjoy.

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