I'd expand a little on what Tracy said: Automatic configuration should
indeed be present in 4.2 or later, but it was also in 4.0 of XFree86 (and
should be in every version since then).  I poit this out because some have
complained about problems with 4.2, but claimed that 4.1 was much more
stable.  If you can't use 4.2, using *any* 4.x release should give you the
autoconfiguration feature.

Also, someone mentioned some extra tools for autoconfiguration.  4.x does
*not* require any seperate tool.  You get it to autoconfig by passing a
parameter (``-config'' maybe?) to the X server, and it writes its best
guess configuration file after probing your hardware.

The config file will probably not be written to the correct place.  (I
recall that I had to run X in auto-config as root, and the file wound up
in root's home-directory.  I needed to manually copy it to one of the
places that XFree86 looks for configurations.)

Also, at least in 4.0, the config was slightly botched, re. mouse
handling.  (It either used something like ``/dev/mouse'' (not
/dev/wsmouse) for the device file, or specified some weird protocol
instead of the wsmouse protocol.)  This is the kind of thing that's easily
fixed, so I assume that it's no longer a problem in 4.1 or later.  (Also,
if you have a serial mouse, you may have special kinds of joy.  (^&  I use
a PS/2 mouse that the kernel feeds into /dev/wsmouse very nicely.)

Another caveat is that the autoconfiguration depends upon the ability of
your hardware to describe itself.  I vaguely recall reading that the
ability of the computer to query your monitor, in particular, was a
potential sticking point.  (I have *no* idea how likely or unlikely it is
that a given monitor has this feature.  My Gateway2000 monitor from ~1997
seems to do it, though.)


  ``I probably don't know what I'm talking about.'' --rauch@math.rice.edu