Running An X.Org Server On 64-bit ARM Can Be A Chore

While for many Phoronix readers it's been many years since being required to fiddle around with the X.Org Server's xorg.conf in order to configure your graphics adapter / monitor to get the X Server up and running, for 64-bit ARM (AArch64) a manual configuration may still be needed.

Red Hat's Marcin Juszkiewicz, a developer specializing in ARM Linux systems, wrote about small changes needed to get an X.Org Server running on 64-bit ARM. In this case, an APM Mustang.

Without a X configuration file that specifies the driver and BusID, the X.Org Server will fail to find a graphics card. This is due to the system's firmware not initializing the card and thus the boot VGA check failed.

The longer-term solution to fix ARM systems where their firmware doesn't initialize the graphics card is to either remove the boot VGA check in the X.Org Server or to change the Linux kernel code to mark the first graphics card found as being the boot VGA. It's not known yet what solution will ultimately work its way upstream.

More details via this blog post.