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On Thursday, October 3, 2002, at 08:32 AM, Kyle Faber wrote:

> The default XF86Config file on Redhat is XF86config-4.  Can't tell you 
> why....
> anyone know?

Since I haven't quite seen it fully explained, it works like this:

The two major versions of XFree86 (the graphics server) are "Version 3" 
and "Version 4".

"Version 3" had configuration files that (in many people's opinion) 
were ugly and difficult to organize.  "Version 4" worked towards fixing 
this, but it (obviously) required a completely new format for the 
configuration file.

Unfortunately, "Version 4" did not contain all of the drivers that 
"Version 3" did, and some of the drivers that it did include were not 
as stable.  This led to a transitionary phase where people experimented 
with "Version 4" but still ran "Version 3" as a stable environment.  It 
also led to the problem where the new X configuration tools had no way 
of knowing which format to use.

The solution to this was to change the XF86Config file name.  Note that 
"Version 4" searches through a sequence of files by default:

$XCONFIG/XF86Config-4
$XCONFIG/XF86Config
$HOME/XF86Config-4
$HOME/XF86Config

Thus, "Version 4" can read "Version 3" configuration files, but this is 
not recommended.  As far as I know, XFree86 does not assume 
$XCONFIG/XF86Config is a "Version 3" file, though.  Thus, you should be 
able to safely "mv /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11XF86Config" if the new 
file is a problem.  However, there is no reason (other than habit) to 
do this.

Corrections or additions are welcome.  I don't really know a whole lot 
about this stuff, but I do spend a lot of time listening to other 
people. ;-)

- -- 
                                                            Voltage Spike
       ,,,
      (. .)
- --ooO-(_)-Ooo--

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