I've been trying to find some information how to upgrade to X11 R7.1.

I could give it a try by myself but I dont even know where to begin. I allready have X11 R6.9 installed and configured. Anybody willing to give me a push in a direction?

I have been looking for information about how to do this but I cant find any one solution about it (even tried HOWTOs)

I would also appreciate any tips to how to backup up current configuration.

I know this is kind of a newbie question but I found that many intermediate users have trouble with this so I guess this is the right place to ask this.

/MFC

Your configuration is stored in the /etc/X11 directory (in particular the xorg.conf plus various other files. I would back those up and keep copies of all the original xorg-x11 packages spo I would have them if I screwed up and needed to recompile. There seem to be a few threads like this one on the net (see the original post and the replies) that deal with problems people have doing this. You should also read the documentation on www.x.org to get an idea of how to build 7.1.