Brice Goglin's Blog - Debian/X.org notes - Modesettings/RandR-1.2 improvements with Intel driver 2.0 and others

13:08 - Debian/X.org notes - Modesettings/RandR-1.2 improvements with Intel driver 2.0 and others

RandR-1.2 and modesetting enable autodetection of modes (resolutions, modelines, ...) in drivers. The Intel driver 2.0 is the first one to support this, nv came soon after for G80, ati and mga will arrive in the near future.

They make lots of configuration useless, so /etc/X11/xorg.conf may be simplified:

• drop ModeLine, HorizSync and VertRefresh from the Monitor section
• drop Modes line from the Display subsection

Additionally, thanks to the X server autoconfiguration capabilities, most trivial sections become useless. The only really required one for a regular setup is the InputDevice section for the keyboard since you still need to configure the layout (there is no way to detect this automatically).

Regarding the Intel driver 2.0 itself, note that the i915resolution package become useless (it modifies BIOS tables that the new driver does not use).