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X11 & the Desktop

Amix ships a stock X Window System as its GUI: by default X11R4 🟡, optionally upgraded to X11R5 via the Gateway! Vol.2 CD 🟡. The default window environment is OpenLook (olwm/olwsm); on a machine with only the built-in mono display you typically run the lighter tvtwm instead 🟡. Color X requires an A2410 graphics board, driven through a TIGA server started with olinit -- -tiga 🟡. The historical X stack is notoriously slow and buggy ("slow as molasses" on the mono path 🟡), so the modern reproduction route is a retargetable-graphics (RTG) server (Xrtg) on top of a framebuffer driver such as the MNT VA2000 ✅.

This page covers the historical X11 environment, how to bring up color on the A2410, the OpenLook desktop and its font-path gotcha, the well-known X quirks, and the modern RTG alternative. For driver-level detail on building an X server, see X11 / RTG drivers and the xrtg-amix case study.

Confidence note. The X11 facts here are a mix of ✅ (repo source for the RTG path) and 🟡 (amigaunix.com / forum lore for the historical R4/R5, TIGA and quirk material). The "default is R4 vs R5" question is itself a documented conflict — see Which version of X? below.

The X stack at a glance

Layer Historical Amix Modern RTG reproduction
X server X (mono) / olinit -- -tiga color via A2410 TIGA 🟡 Xrtg (X11R5 DDX) ✅
Display HW Built-in mono framebuffer; A2410 "Lowell" TMS34010, 1024×768 color ✅ Zorro II RTG card, e.g. MNT VA2000 ✅
Window manager OpenLook olwm + olwsm; tvtwm on mono 🟡 any (olwm, twm, …)
X release X11R4 default 🟡; X11R5 via Gateway! Vol.2 🟡 X11R5 (the Xrtg server is R5) ✅
Fonts needs the Xol OpenLook font set 🟡 inherited from the X11R5 build

Which version of X?

  • The shipped X is X11R4 by default 🟡. amigaunix.com — the most authoritative community source — reports R4 as the default, and this is the value we carry. See the open conflict noted in sources/research-brief.md §13.7.
  • You can upgrade to X11R5 using the Gateway! Vol.2 CD 🟡, which also bundles additional graphics-board drivers (Picasso II, Piccolo, Domino, etc., Zorro II / linear modes only) 🟡.
  • 🔴 The "R4 vs R5 default" claim conflicts between sources. Do not state R5 as the shipped default; treat R4 as default and R5 as the documented upgrade until a primary source settles it.

Warning: the R5 upgrade changes the font search path and breaks OpenLook's font lookup — you must re-add the Xol path by hand (see The Xol font-path fix) 🟡.

Mono display: tvtwm

On a machine with no A2410 — i.e. only the Amiga's built-in framebuffer driving a monochrome X server — the practical window manager is tvtwm (the virtual-desktop variant of twm) 🟡. The mono server is functional but slow; early releases (1.1) were described as "slow as molasses" 🟡. There is no color and no acceleration on this path.

# Mono path: start X, then a lightweight WM.
# (xinit/startx will read your ~/.xinitrc; tvtwm is the typical choice.)
tvtwm &

Color on the A2410 (TIGA)

Color X on real Amix hardware means the A2410 "Lowell" graphics board: a TMS34010 TIGA coprocessor at 1024×768 ✅. The X server talks to it through TIGA, and you bring it up with olinit passing server arguments after the -- separator 🟡:

# Start the OpenLook session on the A2410 via the TIGA server:
olinit -- -tiga

# Some setups also pass a TIGA mode selector, e.g. mode 3:
olinit -- -tiga -tm 3
  • -tiga selects the A2410/TIGA server backend 🟡.
  • -tm 3 is a TIGA mode argument (graphics mode/timing selector) seen in community configs 🟡; the exact mode-number meaning is not primary-verified, so treat the specific value as community lore.
  • The A2410 is Zorro II and uses the standard Amiga AUTOCONFIG discovery the kernel reads via autocon() 🟡 — see Hardware and Zorro AUTOCONFIG. Amix cannot use Zorro III boards at all ✅, so any color graphics option must be a Zorro II / linear-mode card.

The OpenLook desktop: olwm / olwsm

The default desktop environment is OpenLook 🟡, Sun's pre-CDE look-and-feel:

  • olwm — the OpenLook Window Manager (window decoration, menus, focus).
  • olwsm — the OpenLook Workspace Manager (the root-window workspace menu / session management).
  • OpenLook needs its bitmap font set, conventionally installed under an .../Xol directory in the X font path 🟡. Without it, olwm/olwsm fail to find their UI fonts.
# A typical OpenLook session brings up both managers:
olwsm &
olwm &

The Xol font-path fix

When you upgrade to X11R5 (via Gateway! Vol.2), the new server's default font path no longer includes the OpenLook Xol fonts, so OpenLook can't start cleanly 🟡. Re-add the Xol directory to the running server's font path:

# Append the OpenLook (Xol) font directory to the X server font path.
# Substitute the real install path of the Xol fonts on your system.
xset fp+ /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Xol
xset fp rehash

Note: the exact filesystem location of the Xol fonts depends on the release/install; the fp+ mechanism (append a directory) and the need to do it after the R5 upgrade are the load-bearing facts 🟡.

Known X11 quirks

The historical X stack has several well-documented annoyances. These are 🟡 (amigaunix.com / forum / Usenet reports) and are also collected on the quirks checklist:

  • Keyboard y/z swapped 🟡 — the X keymap maps the Amiga keyboard such that y and z come out transposed (a German/US layout artifact). Fix with a corrected xmodmap keymap.
  • / requires SHIFT-8 🟡 — the forward-slash isn't where the X keymap expects it; it lands on SHIFT-8. Also an xmodmap fix.
  • xload crashes 🟡 — the stock system-load monitor client is unstable on Amix; avoid it.
  • X11R4 memory leaks 🟡 — the default R4 server/clients leak memory over a long session; restarting X periodically is the practical workaround. (One more reason the R5 upgrade or the modern RTG server is preferable.)

Because these are keymap/server-level issues, the cleanest mitigation for the keyboard ones is a saved xmodmap file sourced from your ~/.xinitrc:

# Example skeleton — load a corrected keymap at session start.
# Put the real keysym lines for y/z and slash in ~/.Xmodmap.
xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

The modern alternative: RTG via Xrtg + a framebuffer driver

Rather than fight the A2410 TIGA path or the mono server, the modern hobby route is retargetable graphics: a character framebuffer driver plus an X11R5 server (Xrtg) that renders to it ✅. This is the project's centerpiece example and is fully reproducible against Amix 2.1p2a on an A3000 / 68030 / Zorro II ✅.

The two-piece stack:

  1. va2000 — a char framebuffer driver for the MNT VA2000 RTG card. Device /dev/va2000, char major 68 minor 0; modes 800×600 / 1024×768 / 1280×720 @ 16-bit ✅. See the VA2000 case study.
  2. Xrtg — an X11R5 X server (DDX) layered over that driver: TrueColor RGB565, 640×480 up to 1920×1080, with hardware blitter fills/copies and a software cursor ✅. See the xrtg-amix case study.

The Xrtg DDX path is: X clients → Xrtg → AMIX DDX (ddx/amix/) → RTG layer → VA2000 (ddx/amix/rtg/va2000/) → /dev/va2000 ✅. Input is wired through the AMIX screen manager (OpenScreen(), SIOCACTIVATE) ✅.

# Modern RTG path (after the va2000 driver is in the kernel and /dev/va2000 exists):
#   1. Confirm the framebuffer device node:
ls -l /dev/va2000          # expect: crw-...  68,  0
#   2. Start the RTG X server, then your window manager of choice:
Xrtg &
olwm &
  • Build details (X11R5 imake with a custom config/amix.cf, BuildPex=NO, SVR4 lib rules to avoid ranlib issues) live in the xrtg case study ✅.
  • Getting the VA2000 driver into the kernel (the 6 patched kernel files, mknod /dev/va2000 c 68 0, make install → relocunix, make bootpart KERNEL=relocunix, reboot) is covered in the VA2000 case study and kernel build ✅.
  • Licensing: the new code is MIT-licensed; the X11R5 portions retain X Consortium terms; both repos are source-only because they link against a licensed Amix SVR4 environment ✅.

See also

Sources

  • sources/research-brief.md §11 (Networking, X11, userland — condensed), §2 (Hardware: A2410 "Lowell" TMS34010 1024×768; Zorro II only; Gateway! Vol.2 drivers), §12 (Quirks checklist), §13.7 (R4-vs-R5 default conflict).
  • sources/research-brief.md §6 — asokero/xrtg-amix and asokero/va2000-amix repo facts (Xrtg DDX layering, RGB565/resolutions, /dev/va2000 char major 68, imake/amix.cf build, MIT + X Consortium licensing).
  • asokero/xrtg-amix — X11R5 Xrtg server source (DDX ddx/amix/, RTG layer).
  • asokero/va2000-amix — VA2000 framebuffer driver source.
  • amigaunix.com — X11 — community-reported R4/R5, TIGA, OpenLook, and keymap quirks (🟡).