Yeah, except 15 years ago it was xf86config with xinerama if you wanted multiple heads, and lcds are a walk in the park compared to CRTs - I actually killed a nice 21” monitor by screwing up the frequencies. I even recall the delightful process of having to modify graphics drivers to work with the bizarre Chips&Technologies integrated graphics I had. At that point, OSX was such a breath of fresh air.

Xorg.conf is a delightful stroll through a meadow compared to the nightmare fuel that came before, and in setting Linux (Kali,Ubuntu) on several machines of various spec over the last weeks, it has Just Worked.

FWIW, X configures itself nowadays and Wayland also just works. But I know where you are coming from. Everything audio related for example is still in very bad shape when you want more than Intel HDA.