Is xorg necessary.......

[rex]

Is the installation of xorg necessary to use some other window amanager? What I mean is installing xorg installs whole lot of things like x tools and apps (xcal, xclock........ and yes its own window manager (twm i guess)) which we don't use as in most cases we install our own preferred apps and window manager.

So is it possible to install minimal X ?

Just curious.

[BSDfan666]

Xorg is necessary, everything graphical runs atop of it on Unix-like systems... some utilities you don't use personally, may be used by some other 3rd party program.

Just deal with it, the overall size of Xorg is small considering the capacity of modern drives.

[TerryP]

Well, I'd reckon one could just install xorg-server and any other required components by hand; but unless you're pressed for space, it's not worth the bother.

[drhowarddrfine]

And it looks like it's installing a lot of stuff but most/many of those are very small packages.

[mdh]

A lot of them are libraries. Your window manager (be it gnome, kde, fluxbox, or whatever else) uses those libraries to access the X server and do things on your monitor.

A minimal X install would be xorg-server, enough libraries for xterm to work, and xterm...
Or, if you wanted to get really minimal, you could forgo xterm, though you wouldn't be able to do anything.

[rex]

I’m not complaining about the libraries, I'm talking apps. I agree those are small and take up very less if not negligible space in the HD. Just wanted to know are those apps and the default window manager of xorg necessary. I agree some of those apps might be used by some third party programs but not all, for instance which third part app is going to use the xorg window manager also the tons of fonts which it installs. Now I don't know if those fonts are used somewhere or not but I've never used it and assume a normal user like me would hardly use it.

[jb_daefo]

if your /usr is less than 70 percent full after Xorg is
installed, it would save you time and effort just to
leave it default IMHO. A while ago I toyed with
the same questions as those which started this
thread

[mdh]

Originally Posted by rex

I’m not complaining about the libraries, I'm talking apps. I agree those are small and take up very less if not negligible space in the HD. Just wanted to know are those apps and the default window manager of xorg necessary. I agree some of those apps might be used by some third party programs but not all, for instance which third part app is going to use the xorg window manager also the tons of fonts which it installs. Now I don't know if those fonts are used somewhere or not but I've never used it and assume a normal user like me would hardly use it.

Well, one thing to think about with fonts is that CSS/HTML can specify a font to use. This means different web pages can use different fonts, so your web browser may need a wide variety of them to display pages the way the designer intended.

There are other examples, but this one sticks out.

[roddierod]

If you don't install the meta package Xorg. You can install the different modular parts you want and skip the ones you don't want. As long as you install the dependencies.

Xorg-apps seems to be the port you don't want to install. And all the fonts come in different ports.

I seem to recall Scottro even posting a how to on installing the minimum xorg when xorg first went modular...don't recall which board that was on, it was a few years ago. I think maybe BSDNexus...

[troberts]

I installed the following for my xorg installation:

x11/xorg-libraries
x11/xauth
x11/xinit
x11/xterm

x11-fonts/xorg-fonts

x11-servers/xorg-server

x11-wm/twm

x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard
x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse
x11-drivers/xf86-video-vga
x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa

For the video driver you can pick the one that matches your video card so do a little digging first. As a fallback plan you might want to also install the xf86-video-vesa and xf86-video-vga drivers. I have a game crash because it could not find the vga driver. If you have a joystick then you would install xf86-input-joystick, and the same goes for other input hardware so look at what you have and see if there is a specific driver for it. TWM (Tabbed Window Manager) is good for right after you install the base system and before you install the window manager of your choosing, because it makes it possible to resize and move the three default terminal windows that appear when you startx.

[graudeejs]

Originally Posted by troberts

I installed the following for my xorg installation:

x11/xorg-libraries
x11/xauth
x11/xinit
x11/xterm

x11-fonts/xorg-fonts

x11-servers/xorg-server

x11-wm/twm

x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard
x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse
x11-drivers/xf86-video-vga
x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa

For the video driver you can pick the one that matches your video card so do a little digging first. As a fallback plan you might want to also install the xf86-video-vesa and xf86-video-vga drivers. I have a game crash because it could not find the vga driver. If you have a joystick then you would install xf86-input-joystick, and the same goes for other input hardware so look at what you have and see if there is a specific driver for it. TWM (Tabbed Window Manager) is good for right after you install the base system and before you install the window manager of your choosing, because it makes it possible to resize and move the three default terminal windows that appear when you startx.

I will have to try this out, next time i reinstall my FreeBSD