XFree86 4.0 was the first official release of the new XFree86 4 series. It was based on X11R6.4.
XFree86 4 represents a significant redesign of the XFree86 X server. Not all of the hardware drivers from 3.3.x have been ported to 4.x yet, but conversely, 4.x has support for a lot of hardware that is not supported in 3.3.x. Our Driver Status document summarizes how the hardware driver support compares between 3.3.6 and 6.7.0.
X11R6.7.0 comes with a graphical configuration tool called
"xorgcfg",
which also has a text mode interface and can be used to create an initial
configuration file. It can also be used to customise existing
configurations.
Next in the order of configuration preferences is to use the Xorg server's ability to create a starting configuration file. Run as root:
Xorg -configure
Finally, if all else fails, the trusty old standby text-based tool
"xorgconfig" can also be used for generating X server config
files.
At least one, and hopefully, all of these configuration options will give you a reasonable starting point for a suitable configuration file. With the automatic mechanism you might even find that you don't need one!
If you do need to customise the configuration file, see the xorg.conf manual page. You can also check the driver-specific manual pages and the related documentation (found at tables below also.
Before downloading the binary distributions for this release, please have a quick read through the Installation Document. It may save you some time and also help you figure out which of the binary releases you need.
The next section describes what is new in the latest version (6.7.0) compared with the previous full release (6.6.0). The other sections below describe some of the new features and changes between 3.3.x and 4.0. There are lots of new features, and we definitely don't have enough space to cover them all here.