X autodetection/configuration, was Re: [Fedora-livecd-list] squashfs -- anyone have a pristine tree?

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2006-04-12 at 13:07 -0700, Jane Dogalt wrote:
> Actually it's called "Xorg -configure".  That will generate an xorg.conf file
> that matches your vga (and sometimes monitor I think) hardware.  Then you do
> some sed or python or perl to tune things like the user preferred resolution.

This is actually a really poor way to do things.  Frob hardware once to
start X, then exit, then start again?  It's a bit overkill.  Plus,
modifying of an xorg.conf is very painful.  You also need to take into
account whether or not font paths are being used or a font server, etc,
etc.

Was harassing ajax some more about this yesterday, though, and we came
to the conclusion that if you comment out the modes line from the
display section and the horizontal and vertical sync lines from the
monitor section, X mostly auto-detects and picks the "best" that can be
done.  That plus xrandr could get very reasonable automagic X setups.

Jeremy