The old nvidia-glx and nvidia-kernel packages have been replaced by a single nvidia-drivers package. If you're still using the old packages, you'll want to upgrade to the new package first, as the old ones will not work with modular Xorg, by running:

# emerge -Ca nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel
# emerge nvidia-drivers
# eselect opengl set nvidia

If your system is going to install xorg-x11-7.1 and you wish to use xorg-x11-7.0 instead you'll need to add the following to /etc/portage/package.mask (create it if it doesn't exist):

# Mask xorg 7.1
>=x11-base/xorg-x11-7.1
>=x11-base/xorg-server-1.1.0
>=x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev-1.1.2-r1
>=x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa-1.2.0
>=x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse-1.1.1
>=x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard-1.1.0
>=x11-drivers/xf86-video-tdfx-1.2.0

Because Xorg is such a key part of a desktop system, you'll want to backup your current install before continuing. To do this we're going to use the quickpkg command from the gentoolkit package:

emerge -a gentoolkit
quickpkg xorg-x11

If you want to find out more about the quickpkg tool, run: man quickpkg

Additionally, create a list of packages that have files in the Xorg specific directories by running:

if [[ ! -L /usr/X11R6 ]]; \
then equery belongs /usr/X11R6 > ~/usr-x11r6-packages \
&& rm -rf /usr/X11R6; fi

To restore your backed-up package run: emerge --usepkgonly -a xorg-x11-6.8.2-r8

If you can't remember the exact version you can find it out by running: ls /usr/portage/packages/All/xorg-x11*

You then want to re-emerge all the packages listed in ~/usr-x11r6-packages.

After cleaning out the old X, and before the new X is installed, you will not be able to start any X applications as X is not technically installed. The applications depending on X currently running are just running off the memory of X. Closing them will not enable you to re-open them until the new X is installed.

Programs currently running in X may become unstable during the install. For example, firefox may unexpectedly crash due to not being able to find fonts which are no longer there, or other similar reasons.

It is hence highly recommended that you print out a copy of this guide (or save a tree and open this guide on a console (not in X)) before you begin. Your programs should go back to behaving normally once the install is complete, however you may want to restart X as soon as possible afterwards.

Uninstall your current xorg install by running: emerge -Ca xorg-x11

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Mar 27  2005 /usr/X11R6 -> ../usr

Modular Xorg introduces a new system for managing the driver packages for your devices. You need to set the appropriate VIDEO_CARDS and INPUT_DEVICES flags in /etc/make.conf. To see what flags are available, run emerge -upv xorg-x11. On a typical machine with an Nvidia video card, it might look like this:

INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse"
VIDEO_CARDS="nv nvidia vesa"

The nv driver is the open source unofficial driver that lacks 3D acceleration. The nvidia driver is the official nvidia-drivers package.

On an ATI System, the VIDEO_CARDS line should be like this (unless you don't wish to use proprietary drivers fglrx):

VIDEO_CARDS="radeon fglrx vesa"

Add the dri USE flag to /etc/make.conf to enable Direct Rendering support, which most graphics drivers use.

There may be people who will search for the ca_enhanced keyboard mapping in Xorg 7.0. It has not disappeared, it just changed names to ca(fr), as with this keyboard configuration:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard1"
    Driver      "kbd"
    Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
    Option "XkbRules"   "xorg"
    Option "XkbModel"   "pc105"
    Option "XkbLayout"  "ca(fr)"
EndSection

Notice that Option "XkbRules" "xfree86" won't work for modular xorg-x11. You have to change it to "xorg", or many keys will not produce the desired effect.

In case you defined a custom xkb model (e.g. if you added a diNovo keyboard), check if you modified /usr/share/X11/xkb and not /usr/lib/X11/xkb.

If your X server is restarting each time you pressed a non dead key, add the following link:

# ln -s /usr/share/X11/XKeysymDB /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB

If building of openmotif fails run: emerge -DuNav --oneshot printproto xbitmaps libXp

Then restart the emerge using: emerge --resume

The first thing to try is to update eselect-opengl to at least 1.0.3.

Next check your opengl implementation with eselect opengl list. If xorg-x11 isn't the only option, you probably want the alternate option, so change it with: eselect opengl set <implementation>

Solution: You need to specify which drivers you want by modifying /etc/make.conf to reflect your hardware. If nothing is specified, it will build them all!

INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse synaptics evdev"

Please see TIP Setting Mouse Speed Through Command Line for more information.

Please see the Modular XOrg section of HOWTO Advanced Mouse for more extensive information.

Re-emerge the appropriate drivers (ati-drivers or nvidia-drivers) to get X running again after the install. Make sure you recompile the the drivers with same compiler you used for the kernel, otherwise you'll get message about the module format being incompatible when you try to load the fglrx kernel module.

The install script of the binary drivers available from Matrox (v4.4 at the time of writing) copies the driver files to

/usr/lib/modules/drivers

instead of

/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers

Copy the correct files (mga_drv.so/mga_hal_drv.so) manually to get Xinerama working again.

The AltGr key and/or other national special keys may stop working after an update to modular X. To fix this, unmerge the new xkeyboard-config and re-emerge the xkbdata package which contains correct translations for that key.

If the above fix doesn't work, you can also try running: xmodmap -e "keycode 113 = Mode_switch"

Sometimes it can happen that GNOME / KDE keyboard layout switching doesn't work. To correct this, create xkb as a symbolic link in the /usr/lib64/X11 lib directory with:

cd /usr/lib64/X11
ln -s /usr/share/X11/xkb/ xkb

There are X11 fonts that may be in use but not available. See the Xorg and fonts HOWTO and install the listed fonts.