GraphicalXConfiguration

Revision 20 as of 2006-11-01 02:26:55

Clear message

Summary

We need an easy way for people to change their X configuration in a sane way, including enabling 3D acceleration, 2 monitors, etc.

Rationale

This is being proposed to decrease the ["ListOfNGUIs"]; i.e. to make it possible to change video settings beyond screen resolution through the GUI. As it stands, configuring X involves the manual editing of a text-based configuration file, which is not particularly well-commented.

Use cases

Brian wants to add a second monitor. He has either a second graphics card or a video card with two video outputs. He goes to System>Administration>Video Settings (or similar) and clicks to add a new screen. A wizard guides him through setting graphical options.

Scope

Packaging an existing GUI tool.

Design

<to-do>

Implementation

A number of tools already exist. We need to look at all of them for sanity and ease of packaging.

system-config-xfree86

  • Created by Red Hat. Written in Python and pyGTK, which is a good sane language. UI is clear and easy to understand and is focused on what the user wants to do, rather than the syntax of the existing xorg.conf

http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/config-tools/redhat-config-xfree86.html

Xorg-Edit

  • Created specifically for Ubuntu. Exposes much of the syntax of xorg.conf and uses wxWidgets, which are not in main. Unsuitable

http://www.cyskat.de/dee/progxorg.htm

Sax2

  • Complete tool to control X, not just a GUI. Unknown how it will deal with new Xorg input and output hotplug. Allows configuration of tablets, etc. Large amounts of code to be audited.

http://sax.berlios.de/

Guidance

  • Written to be "the KDE system tools". Written in Python. Already shipped with Ubuntu for Kubuntu. Modular to allow GTK frontend to be written.

http://www.simonzone.com/software/guidance

Code

Available from above link. Work needs doing. See below.

Outstanding issues

There is new code landing in Xorg for the handling of input and outplug devices automatically. This new code means much of Sax2 and potentially Guidance might be obsolete.

The gui should not be able to leave the user in an unbootable state. There is another spec for dealing with X failures: https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/bullet-proof-x

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