The configuration file XF86Config of the XFree86 project is used by the X server to set necessary configuration parameters.
It is a plain text file ordered into sections and subsections. Important sections are Files, InputDevice, Monitor, Modes, Screen, Device, and ServerLayout. [1] [2]
Sections can appear in any order and there may be more than one section of each kind, for example, if you have more than one monitor, say a video projector and an onboard LCD of a notebook.
The Monitor sections are for the physical displaying devices, the Screen sections are for the logical displays, so you can have two monitors displaying the same content or entirely different information.
The option "SWCursor" in the Device section for example controls whether the mouse pointer is mirrored on an external monitor or suppressed.
On typical Unix-like systems the file often is found in /etc/X11 and a log file is in /var/log, typically named XFree86.0.log for the last start of X and XFree86.0.log.old for the previous one.
Inappropriate editing of this file may result in a black or illegible screen or might even damage the monitor, especially if it is a CRT. The user should be able to operate the system through console mode (i.e. "text mode") when configuring X, as X might fail to start due to an invalid configuration leaving the user with merely the CLI.
In the X.org Server fork of the XFree86 project, the file is called xorg.conf , but the specification is nearly identical. The X.org Server tries, however, to autoconfigure as much as possible with the aim of making xorg.conf unnecessary in the greatest proportion of cases.
The X Window System is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the XFree86 License version 1.1. It was developed by the XFree86 Project, Inc. The lead developer was David Dawes. The last released version was 4.8.0, released December 2008. The last XFree86 CVS commit was made on May 18, 2009; the project was confirmed dormant in December 2011.
A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term terminal covers all remote terminals, including graphical interfaces. A terminal emulator inside a graphical user interface is often called a terminal window.
The Linux framebuffer (fbdev) is a linux subsystem used to show graphics on a computer monitor, typically on the system console.
In computing, a windowing system is a software suite that manages separately different parts of display screens. It is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) which implements the WIMP paradigm for a user interface.
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. Most early computers only had a front panel to input or display bits and had to be connected to a terminal to print or input text through a keyboard. Teleprinters were used as early-day hard-copy terminals and predated the use of a computer screen by decades. The computer would typically transmit a line of data which would be printed on paper, and accept a line of data from a keyboard over a serial or other interface. Starting in the mid-1970s with microcomputers such as the Sphere 1, Sol-20, and Apple I, display circuitry and keyboards began to be integrated into personal and workstation computer systems, with the computer handling character generation and outputting to a CRT display such as a computer monitor or, sometimes, a consumer TV, but most larger computers continued to require terminals.
X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System (X11) display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation.
chroot is an operation on Unix and Unix-like operating systems that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and its children. A program that is run in such a modified environment cannot name files outside the designated directory tree. The term "chroot" may refer to the chroot(2) system call or the chroot(8) wrapper program. The modified environment is called a chroot jail.
Xinerama is an extension to the X Window System that enables X applications and window managers to use two or more physical displays as one large virtual display.
The Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) is the framework comprising the modern Linux graphics stack which allows unprivileged user-space programs to issue commands to graphics hardware without conflicting with other programs. The main use of DRI is to provide hardware acceleration for the Mesa implementation of OpenGL. DRI has also been adapted to provide OpenGL acceleration on a framebuffer console without a display server running.
In the X Window System, an X display manager is a graphical login manager which starts a login session on an X server from the same or another computer.
The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) is a subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with GPUs of modern video cards. DRM exposes an API that user-space programs can use to send commands and data to the GPU and perform operations such as configuring the mode setting of the display. DRM was first developed as the kernel-space component of the X Server Direct Rendering Infrastructure, but since then it has been used by other graphic stack alternatives such as Wayland and standalone applications and libraries such as SDL2 and Kodi.
XDarwin is an obsolete X Window System (X11) display server for the Darwin operating system and early versions of Mac OS X. XDarwin allows one to use programs written for X11 on those operating systems.
Fontconfig is a free software program library designed to provide configuration, enumeration and substitution of fonts to other programs. Fontconfig was originally written and maintained by Keith Packard, and is currently maintained by Behdad Esfahbod.
NetworkManager is a daemon that sits on top of libudev and other Linux kernel interfaces and provides a high-level interface for the configuration of the network interfaces.
A multiseat, multi-station or multiterminal system is a single computer which supports multiple independent local users at the same time.
The file xorg.conf is a file used for configuring the X.Org Server. While typically located in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, its location may vary across operating system distributions.
The Linux console is a system console internal to the Linux kernel. A system console is the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which allows logins in single user mode. The Linux console provides a way for the kernel and other processes to send text output to the user, and to receive text input from the user. The user typically enters text with a computer keyboard and reads the output text on a computer monitor. The Linux kernel supports virtual consoles – consoles that are logically separate, but which access the same physical keyboard and display. The Linux console are implemented by the VT subsystem of the Linux kernel, and do not rely on any user space software. This is in contrast to a terminal emulator, which is a user space process that emulates a terminal, and is typically used in a graphical display environment.
ProFTPD is an FTP server. ProFTPD is Free and open-source software, compatible with Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows . Along with vsftpd and Pure-FTPd, ProFTPD is among the most popular FTP servers in Unix-like environments today. Compared to those, which focus e.g. on simplicity, speed or security, ProFTPD's primary design goal is to be a highly feature rich FTP server, exposing a large amount of configuration options to the user.
A modeline is a configuration line in xorg.conf or the XFree86 configuration file (XF86Config) that provides information to the display server about a connected computer monitor or television and how to drive it at a specified display resolution. The Modeline is based on the Generalized Timing Formula or the Coordinated Video Timings standards produced by VESA.
