Re: [gentoo-user] xorg-server

[Mike Edenfield <kutulu@kutulu.org>]

On Wed, 2010-12-29 at 13:01 +0000, Mick wrote:

> Personally, I can't see why all these additional config files and locations 
> are required, rather than a single /etc/X11/xorg.conf.  I have found all these 
> back and forth changes to fdi's, xorg.conf.d and what have you, unnecessary 
> and annoyingly time wasting.
> 
> Of course I might have missed something simple in all this kerfuffle, so 
> please chime in if there is a better way around this.

If all you are worried about is making your touchpad work in X, and
you're willing to pull it up in a text editor every time you need to
make a change, then no, you didn't really miss anything.

The purpose of xorg.conf.d is to allow packages/utilities/etc to drop in
changes to your X config seamlessly, as in, without the user being
required to take any specific action.  For example, the synaptics input
driver drops a 50-synaptics.conf file into your xorg.conf.d that
includes a simple "this is a touchpad" configuration, which would take
effect just by restarting X.  

The purpose of udev is to configure all of the hardware on your system,
not just for X.  It's how GNOME/KDE/whatever is able to automount your
USB key when it shows up, and knows that /dev/sr0 is a dvd-rom drive,
etc. Just as with HAL, using udev to configure X-specific options is
probably overkill. In theory, other GUI systems besides X could just as
easily read the x11 options from udev and use them. Since there isn't
really any such alternative, the practical benefits of udev over a
monolithic xorg.conf file mostly vanish.

--Mike