Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> 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 try this soon and report back.  I have VESA 2.0 in the onboard chip 
(SiS) and discovered another onboard SiS chip in our other fast computer.

> 
> > 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.

ONE of our 13 PCI video cards so far worked with the s3 driver in lots of 
colors.  Two others are supposed to work.  The others use xsvga driver.

>     
> > 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.  

We have the advantage of living in a large university town where people 
put out working 17" monitors at the curb, along with mostly working 
pentium computers.
 > 
> > 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.  

The problem is that some programs, when run in 8-bit color, convert the 
24-bit color that you are trying to view into 8-bit color and it takes a 
long time to do this.  I think ImageMagick did this.  And the higher 
resolution saves a lot of scrolling when trying to view a high-resolution 
image, which people keep sending me.  Things works in plain VGA but they 
take longer.  

> 
> 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.

Maybe several of us users together can get the framebuffer driver working 
and you can add that to the FAQ.  

> > 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.

We got all our laptops for free, from friends.  I run lynx for DOS on one 
with 3MB RAM.  Only the version without NLS will load on that computer. 


> Cheers,
> Steven
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