Re:Conspicuously absent... (Score 1)

XFree 4.0 really needs a 2.4 kernel (you can run it with a 2.2 kernel with certain patches, but that is not a 'standard').

Hmm, interesting... considering I've been running XFree86 4.0 (and newer) on 2.2.x kernels (with no extra patches) since it was released.

The only extra kernel-related stuff I installed were the NVidia driver modules (which didn't require me to patch the kernel at all). And that was only for OpenGL hardware acceleration (the standard nv driver in XFree86 4.0 worked fine for everything else).