Ugly Xfree86 Upgrade

Question

My apologies for the ugly Xfree86 upgrade that's waiting in the repositories.
With XFree86 4.2.x we used external fontconfig and xft2 libraries to render truetype fonts.  Then Xfree86 4.3.0 came out and used its own internal versions of these libraries, so we made the new X conflict with fontconfig, since both provided the same .so files.
Some users have been requesting that we rebuild XFree86 and link it to the (newer) external fontconfig/freetype2 libraries, rather than opting to use the internal ones.  This gets tricky, because the old Xfree86 4.3.0-6 package _conflicts_ with the fontconfig library, while the new Xfree86 4.3.0-7 _depends_ on it.  Pacman will not allow this upgrade.
To properly upgrade X, you will have to remove Xfree86 from your  system, then reinstall it (you'll probably have to drop out of X to do this, btw).  Don't worry about your /etc/X11/XF86Config file, it will stay where it is.
# pacman -Rd xfree86
# pacman -Sy xfree86

Answer 1

followed the main page instructions on the ugly xfree86 upgrade.
but as pointed out in this thread
nvidia was NOT mentioned
it is not mentioned because nvidia cards are not universal to all systems.
and therefor
X gets removed but not reinstalled.
i don't get this when you pacman -R(d) something your are removing it it is not automatically replaced
had to remove /usr/lib/libGL....
to get X to install
no you did not have to you could have either first removed your nvidia drivers and then installed (as you would have to reinstall anyway) or simply pacman -Sf xfree86 this would replace the nvidia libGL and replace it with Xfree86's libGL. then reinstall the drivers.
I request that more info be placed in the main notice about the X upgrade, since it will do not good when the victim removes X and can't get X back
yes a little more info could have been placed in the original news item but at that time the full extent of what was needed to be done on some systems was not known. this should be in the FAQs and other official documentation until 0.5 is history (iso-wise that is).
no way to check these boards without X.
when you rely on x too much and fancy gui tools you quickly forget the beauty of *nix systems. that being they are very functional without a gui. the internet and world wide web were being browsed from the console long before fancy gui browsers came along. you can use links or lynx for example to browse the web and the forum. you can even login and post. it isn't pretty or necessarily quick browsing within pages but it is very very functional.
plus not to mention the invassive change of
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
to
twm
it was invasive only because you did not schedule this file to be ignored. otherwise it will always be replaced. all distros usually replace this file upon upgrade. you only noticed it because you changed the default settings.
Does the "Ugly X-86 " problem occur every time you try to upgrade ...even after performing the outlined procedure the first time?
this is the only time you should have this trouble. this problem came about because fontconfig was separated out of the Xfree86 code as it was getting too old and uncompliant with newer software.
s there relief from this problem by installing an earlier version of X-86? What is lost if one should be able to do that?
well basically you would be pretty well screwed for upgrading alot of things.
What happens to the GUI KDE when this procedure is utilized? How does one recover from the impact on KDE? Is there any other consequence?
well basically i advise that you do this upgrade outside of X. it is just easier. there will be no effect on KDE but you could have problems running the new KDE if you do not upgrade X.
Frequent upgrades are recommended for arch or any linux OS. This makes such a mess of the process , if it happens every time, that I am discouraged about arch which is touted as a fast distro.
well you are drawing all sorts of conclusions from one really old post. there have been several upgrade of Xfree86 in arch and this was the first time that it was a bit messy. but to be honest it is hardly as bad as it sounds for every post in the thread by someone that had a problem there are probabaly ten who didn't.
if you are going to judge this distro without using it then well mabe you should move along. sorry but really why complain if you are not even using it? besides there is an easy way to avoid this issue altogether. download the base iso and then upgrade and install x and all of your other desired programs. this way you will get the new x and not even have to deal with the x from the full cd. you could also do an ftp install and not have to worry about anything.