XFree86 gained EDID autodetect support later than Windows and this makes people remember issues with high-res modes longer (Windows used to have them too early

XFree86 gained EDID autodetect support later than Windows and this makes people remember issues with high-res modes longer (Windows used to have them too early on, Mac was full of custom crap, unix workstations tended to have explicit data available), Windows around win95/nt tended to come with preselected list (and woe on you if you choose wrong!), which meant that you could just select reasonably close defaults - or if you had fancy display, it might come with windows driver (actually a parameter file) telling the available options. Also remember that significant majority of Windows users didn't have hi-res displays in the days before windows 95, and if you were ok with standard VGA modes, you didn't have to mess much. Personally I remember crafting custom modelines because I wanted more than standard EDID data could give me, cranking up refresh rate to ~81Hz at 1152x864 resolution or so (typical setting on the display was 1024x768)