Introduction Environment Hardware - Selection - Installation Software - OS Installation - Networking - X-Windows - Audio - MythTV Frontend Links

X-Windows The Debian Woody install doesn't contain a specific graphics driver for the graphics chip on the Pundit's motherboard which is why during installation I picked the generic 'vesa' driver. This driver works ok but is far from optimal for good graphics output. Luckily there are some third party Linux drivers for the SiS graphics chip used on the Pundit available on the website of Thomas Winischhofer. These drivers are much better than the vesa driver but in order to install them you first need to install a different version of XFree86. Updating To XFree86 4.3.0 Firstly I added a line to the end of my /etc/apt/sources.list file: deb http://people.debian.org/~mmagallo/packages/xfree86/$(ARCH)/ ./ Following which I ran the following as root: # apt-get update # apt-get upgrade Updating SiS Driver Installing XFree86 4.3.0 as above does include a driver for the SiS chipset, but given that later versions are available I thought that it would be a good idea to update the driver to the latest version. The SiS Driver Page at Thomas Winischhofer's website has a wealth of information about these drivers. I scrolled down that page to the download section and downloaded the latest version of the drivers (they seem to be built every day) which had been built with GCC 2.95 for XFree86 4.3.0, in my case: sis_drv.o_4.3.0_gcc2_300803-1.tar.gz I unpacked the downloaded file in my 'matt' user's home directory: $ cd ~matt $ tar zxvf sis_drv.o_4.3.0_gcc2_300803-1.tar.gz Finally it is just a case of copying the unpacked file over the top of the SiS driver included in the XFree86 default installation. The following needs to be done as the root user: # cp ~matt/sis_drv.o /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers Configuration Now that the new SiS driver had been installed it was just a case of making a minor modification to the XFree86 configuration file to tell X to use the SiS driver. I edited the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file and in the 'Device' section I changed the line which read: Driver "vesa" To be: Driver "sis" Following that change it was just a case of restarting X by logging out and back in again. In order to check that the new driver was being used I checked the XFree86.0.log file in /var/log. In actual fact, I had to log back and in again a couple of times before it used the new driver although I'm not sure why. You could always reboot to be sure... I know that there will have to be a lot more configuration settings made once I plug the Pundit into a real TV, but for now that is the only change that I made. Once I figure out what other settings I need I will return and document them on this page.