“A crucial aspect of any problem solving process is identifying
what the problem really is. Let this be a lesson to you: standard
RedHat installations come configured with many more features than
are really needed.”
“Spend any time in the Linuxcare technical support pit, and
you’ll soon discover that some of the most frequently asked
questions are about the X Window System. Usually, we’ve been able
to solve most of these questions with simple configuration
assistance. However, one call we took involved a problem with
the XFree86 font subsystem, and required more attention than
usual.“
“Patiently, the caller told me how he recently bought and set up
a new Linux-driven Dell desktop system at his office. After about a
week of use, he could no longer launch the X Window System.
Specifically, the errors “Failed to set default font path” and
“Could not open default font ‘fixed'” were received when trying to
run “startx”. This prevented him from getting to the desktop, and
left him stuck at the shell prompt.”