Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, James Miller wrote:

> 
> As for xvesa/fbdev: like I mentioned, they're pretty poorly documented.  A
> place where I learned a bit about xvesa though was on an active web-based
> listserv for a live CD distro called DamnSmallLinux: it uses xvesa/fbdev,
> so issues concerning it are discussed alot there.  If you ferret through
> the archive, you are likely to find some helpful tidbits.  DamnSmallLinux
> homepage is at www.damnsmalllinux.org .  A link for the forum is on that
> page (look under display/X discussions).
> 
> James
> 
> PS If you use a serial mouse, some special tweaking of xvesa is required.
> I can provide tips on getting a serial mouse working using it, if you have
> one and get that far.
> 

Luckily the only computer without a PS/2 mouse port has our only video
card that I could get to work with an accelerated server (an older S3).

I was trying to find more information on xvesa online.  Apparently xvesa, 
tinyx, fbdev, and Kdrive are all somehow related.  Kdrive requires Vesa 
1.1 rather than 2.0 but does not support something or other and works with 
less RAM.  They may all need frame buffer support in the kernel which I 
think Steven said BL2 does not have.  I don't understand enough vocabulary 
to follow the explanations.  

Unless Steven or someone else knowledgeable wants to get xvesa or kdrive 
or fbdev working with BL2, I will give up and live with 8-bit color, and 
use DOS if I need to view pretty pictures (and to print graphics).  

At the time Steven put together BL1, maybe most 'older hardware' only
supported plain VGA but all of our desktop computers now have PCI video
cards with Vesa 1.2 support and 16 million colors at 640, and our color
monitors will all do 1024 resolution, so perhaps it is time to come up
with some foolproof X with more colors for 'older desktops' since 1994.  

Laptops may not do more than 640 or have VESA support so the vga16 is
still useful (but our laptops with only 640 resolution also have
only 2-3M RAM).

I find that vga16 works nicely in greyscale (on my 9" mono VGA monitor).


I read that you can specify -dpi for startx.  How many dpi is 640 
resolution on a 14" monitor?