Upgrade to XFree86-4.3.0 in Debian Sid.
NOTE: This worked on the Sid (unstable branch) of Debian. I am not sure if it will work on woody or sarge. Credit goes to whiprush and evane on arstechnica who spent the time to help me get through this. Thanks guys. :) Also, if you use Nvidia drivers, make sure you have a copy of them in your home directory, since you will have to reinstall them after the upgrade.
Your reasons for upgrading to XFree86-4.3.0 may vary, so I am not going to go into that. I upgraded because I just wanted to. So here are the steps:
1) Edit apt sources.list
# vi /etc/apt/sources.list
and add the following to it:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian ../project/experimental main contrib non-free
Save sources.list.
2) Update apt:
# apt-get update
3) Make a text file and add the following info to it. Call the text file whatever you want:
lbxproxy
libdps1
libxaw7
proxymngr
twm
x-window-system
x-window-system-core
xbase-clients
xdm
xfonts-100dpi
xfonts-75dpi
xfonts-base
xfonts-scalable
xfree86-common
xfs
xlibmesa-dri
xlibmesa-gl
xlibmesa-gl-dev
xlibmesa-glu
xlibmesa-glu-dev
xlibs
xlibs-data
xlibs-dev
xlibs-pic
xlibs-static-pic
xnest
xprt
xserver-common
xserver-xfree86
xspecs
xterm
xutils
xvfb
3) Make apt install the packages for you:
apt-get install -t experimental `cat /path/to/the/above/textfile`
note: ` = the tilde key, usually under the esc key on keyboards.
That is pretty much it for the install/upgrade. Other things you might want to do afterwards:
Reboot and go into single user mode (if using lilo, go to the boot prompt and type: Linux single) , login as root. There you might want to make a new XFree86-4 file. Just look at the instructions at the top of /etc/X11/XFree86-4, it tells you exactly what to do. I will put them here anyways:
#If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following commands as root:
#
# cp /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.custom
# md5sum /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 > /var/lib/xfree86/XF86Config-4.md5sum
# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
If you use Nvidia drivers, you are going to have to reinstall them since the upgrade to XFree86-4.3.0 overwrites them. I think you all know how to do that.
And that is all. Good Luck!!