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Sindi Keesan wrote:
>
> They may all need frame buffer support in the kernel 
> which I think Steven said BL2 does not have.  

That's right.  To use fb, you need to substitute a kernel
from Slackware 7.1 (bare.i is probably the best).  Also,
I think you need to install the devs.tgz package as well.

> Unless Steven or someone else knowledgeable wants to get 
> xvesa or kdrive or fbdev working with BL2, 

I know very little about using the frame buffer; however,
AFAIK it takes just three steps:
--------------------------------------------------------------
(1) replace the zimage (DOS partition) with one from Slackware
(2) installpkg devs.tgz
(3) installpkg xxfb.tgz
--------------------------------------------------------------

Have you tried that?  AFAIK it requires a VESA 2.0 card.

> I will give up and live with 8-bit color

It is strange that none of your video cards can do better than 
that.  All three of my video cards work fine in 16-bit color.
    
> 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, 

Lucky you.  None of my monitors can do more than 800x600 and
only one of my video cards is capable of using the framebuffer
Xserver.  

> so perhaps it is time to come up with some foolproof X with 
> more colors for 'older desktops' since 1994.  

Don't hold your breath.  I am not a GUI person, I have always
been more comfortable at the CLI.  BasicLinux reflects that.
Sure, I have provided (optional) instructions to get a VGA 
desktop up and running, but my main purpose is to provide
something that works on just about anything -- not providing
the prettiest possible eye-candy on your hardware.  

It certainly is possible to get higher resolutions and more
colors on BasicLinux (I personally use 800x600 with 16bit color).
However, moving beyond plain vanilla VGA is much more difficult
because of the varying capabilities all the different video 
cards and monitors.  I am happy for BasicLinux to provide a
VGA foothold that works on most PCs and leave it up to the
user to take it from there.

> Laptops may not do more than 640 or have VESA support so 
> the vga16 is still useful 

You miss the point:  VGA16 is universally useful. 
It may not the best your hardware can do, but it does work.

> (but our laptops with only 640 resolution also have only 2-3M RAM).

My laptop can only do VGA.  It has 12mb RAM.  I'm currently 
bidding on a laptop at auction:  VGA only, 8mb RAM.

Cheers,
Steven