Automatic configuration was introduced with XFree86 4.4.0 which makes it possible to start XFree86 without first creating a configuration file. This was further improved in XFree86 4.5.0.
While the initial automatic configuration support was originally targeted ust for Linux and the FreeBSD variants, in 4.5.0 it now includes Solaris, NetBSD and OpenBSD support, and it is planned that automatic configuration will be supported on other platforms in future releases.
If you are running either Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or Solaris, try Auto Configuration by running:
XFree86 -autoconfig
If you want to customise some things afterwards, you can cut and paste the
automatically generated configuration from the
/var/log/XFree86.0.log file into an XF86Config file
and make your customisations there. If you need to customise some parts
of the configuration while leaving others to be automatically detected,
you can combine a partial static configuration with the automatically
detected one by running:
XFree86 -appendauto
If you using a platform that is not currently supported, then you must try one
of the older methods for getting started like xf86cfg",
which is our graphical configuration tool. It also has a text mode
interface that an be used to create an initial configuration file and
customise existing configurations.
After that, you can use XFree86 server's ability to create a starting configuration file. To do so you must login as root, and run:
XFree86 -configure
and then follow the instructions.
Finally, if all else fails, the trusty old standby text-based tool
"xf86config" can also be used for generating X server config
files.
Hopefully, at least one, and perhaps all of these various configuration options will give you a reasonable starting point for a suitable configuration file but we think that with the automatic mechanism you will probably not need any.
If you would like to customise the configuration file, see the XF86Config manual page. You should also check the driver-specific manual pages and the related documentation, which is found at tables below.
Before downloading any of the binary distributions for this release, read through the Installation Document as it can point out which particular binary you should download.
The next section describes what is new in the latest version (4.5.0) compared with the previous full release (4.4.0). There are many new features in this release and we unfortunately do not have enough space to cover them all here.