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I think X on my machine works fine without /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Some articles say this file is now deprecated but some Unix-like distributions still teach users how to configure X with this file.
So what is the current status of this file? Should it be used or not? If it isn't deprecated, why is X able to work well without it?
Traditionnaly, Xorg was not able to detect and handle all the settings automatically and relied on external intervention to adjust them.
Xorg progressively developed and improved an auto-detection feature which allowed to generate a fairly good configuration file.
That feature eventually became so efficient that it was integrated with the normal engine initialization process.
When present, the configuration file takes precedence over auto-detected settings.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf isn't deprecated per se, but the process of explicitly generating or writing it is deprecated. You can still write a /etc/X11/xorg.conf if you need one, but most people don't need one.
Dec 29, 2016 at 22:50