  We present new results on chiral symmetry breaking in nearly conformal gauge
theories with fermions in the fundamental representation of the SU(3) color
gauge group. The number of fermion flavors is varied in an extended range below
the conformal window with chiral symmetry breaking ($\chi{\rm SB}$) for all
flavors between $N_f=4$ and $N_f=12$. To identify $\chi{\rm SB}$ we apply
several methods which include, within the framework of chiral perturbation
theory, the analysis of the Goldstone spectrum in the p-regime and the spectrum
of the fermion Dirac operator with eigenvalue distributions of random matrix
theory in the $\eps$-regime. Chiral condensate enhancement is observed with
increasing $N_f$ when the electroweak symmetry breaking scale $F$ is held fixed
in technicolor language. Important finite-volume consistency checks from the
theoretical understanding of the $SU(N_f)$ rotator spectrum of the
$\delta$-regime are discussed. We also consider these gauge theories at
$N_f=16$ inside the conformal window. The importance of understanding finite
volume, zero momentum gauge field dynamics inside the conformal window is
pointed out. Staggered lattice fermions with supressed taste breaking are used
throughout the simulations.
