xorg-x11 has the nasty epilepsy-inducing background by default... and xfree installed by the ebuild didn't have it. It's really terrible. I can't find any programs to fix it either (xv is bloatware, xsetroot doesn't work) I'm assuming there was some sort of patch or fiddle in the xfree ebuild that didn't make it into xorg-x11
The '-br' flag gets rid of it and exists by default if you're using startx. If you're using some other method to start X, try adding that flag.
hmm, I just don't understand why it isn't the same as in xfree :) I can't find any patch or ebuild line that would do it Oh well, thanks for your reply... X -br works. I'll leave this open in case someone wants to actually make xorg behave the same way as xfree does, but feel free to close it anyhow (I'll close it if it lies dormant for a couple of weeks)
Actually there was a patch that was removed because of complaints by people that want that background. It hard-coded black rather than the crosshatch, but it was removed in favor of a default -br option that hasn't been added everywhere yet. GNOME and KDE people, could you add the '-br' flag to your default X options for gdm/kdm, please?
Solution for kde: add -br to the arguments to start X in the file: /usr/kde/3.2/share/config/kdm/Xservers (for kde 3.2) After the change the line will look like: :0 local@tty1 /usr/X11R6/bin/X -nolisten tcp -br vt7
well, our patch in xfree was actually a bad idea. The pattern actually serves a useful purpose for tuning montors, apparently. Anyway, this behaviour can be adjusted as stated in previous comments.