I remember using XFree86 in the late 90s and first ~3 years of the 2000s. When the X server started changing a lot circa 2003 it was really exciting, and I very eagerly anticipated those releases. I think Xorg is better than XFree86.

Some of the things they did off the top of my head:

* Render extension. This enabled all sorts of things, like easier drawing and scaling of pixmaps, or better font handling.

* Less monolithic build, phase out imake. This allowed iterating various components at different rates.

* Better auto configuration - less need to write a config file for the most common configurations.

XCB was also a good idea. I don't think it lived up to full potential because interest in writing code for X waned.

I think one thing that was lost to history are some of the proprietary X servers, such as those by Sun and SGI. The XFree86/Xorg lineage is missing their input.

This. 30-70h, 50-160v. You know what I'm talking about. XFree86 was much worse.

Driving CRTs was pretty different from LCD panels.

> * Better auto configuration - less need to write a config file for the most common configurations

Better until you compile a new kernel and realize that you don't have keyboard and mouse in X because it insists using an obscure (event ?) interface. And then press the power button to restart.