Last October, I wrote a beginner's guide to installing XFree86, fink and The Gimp on OS X (see
this hint). At that time, it was easier to get the 'rootless' XFree86 installation outside of fink. Since October, the situation has changed and fink can now install the latest version of rootless XFree86. After stalling for quite a while, I decided it was time to upgrade my installed version.
Since I had originally installed XFree86 without the help of fink, I had to remove it that way as well. I intended, however, to use fink to install the newest version. Here's all I did to upgrade to the newest XFree86 release:
- Remove the two existing X11 directories with sudo rm -r /usr/X11R6 and sudo rm -r /etc/X11
- Remove the XDarwin application with sudo rm -r /Applications/XDarwin.app
- Install the base Xfree86 installation with sudo apt-get install xfree86-base (41mb download)
- Install the rootless patch with sudo apt-get install xfree86-rootless (5mb download)
While the guide was useful at the time it was written, the advances in fink and XFree86 have made it much easier to install a rootless XFree86 server. If I were starting from scratch today, I'd simply install fink then XFree86 as shown above; there is no longer any need to install XFree86 separately (unless you wish to do it that way, of course).
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Site administrative aside: Due to a very early morning commitment at work on Wednesday, updates will be published in the evening, Pacific USA time.]