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James Miller wrote:
>
> I was just sure xvesa could enhance BL (one of the
> reasons I sent you the DamnSmallLinux disk).  

Many thanks, it helped a lot.  It was only when I saw
Xvesa running on an old PC that I really believed it
was possible.

> so simplifying that aspect of trialling/setting up
> BL should make a big difference.  

I don't think it's going to be any easier than VGA16.
You've still got mouse selection.  Added to that will
be selection of resolution.

> Of course there's not much graphical in the ramdisk 
> version or the floppy version to take advantage of 
> a gui

That's why I was thinking about using it as an X termimal.
Since my last message, I've done exactly that: I ran a bare
Xvesa on one computer and fed it applications from another.
Worked fine (once I figured out how to get Xvesa to accept
the feed).  So, if there is a Linux installation anywhere
on a network, you would be able to load the BL2 floppies
(with xvesa.gz added) on any machine in the network and
run X applications on that machine.  I suppose it would
even be possible (on an all Windows network) to boot
the Knoppix CD (or similar) on one machine and feed off
it using BL2 floppies on another machine (which could be
useful for machines with too little RAM for Knoppix or
without CDrom drives).

This is not theoretical (I can do it now), but it would
take a bit of rejigging to make it simple to use and to
accommodate a wider variety of network cards.  BTW, it
could even be used via PPP (after all, once your TCP/IP
network is set up, it's all the same thing).  

> Just out of curiosity: the ramdisk/floppy versions don't 
> have installpkg, do they?  

No they don't (although you could use tar to unpack packages).

> If not, I guess you copied it over from your DOS partition 
> to do the install of xvesa?

All you need is the Xvesa binary (which I gzipped to fit on
the floppy).  There are no other files (I believe fonts are
built into the binary).

> >----------------------------------------------------------------
> >A non-ramdisk BL (including X, icewm, pkgtool, manpages, PCMCIA)
> >that comes as a 5mb zip file.  Unzips in DOS and installs to its
> >own ext2 partition on systems with as little as 4mb RAM.
> >----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'll look forward to hearing about further development.  This 
> will be BL 2.2, no doubt?  

For such a big change, it would have to be BL3.
 
> Btw, I've got the solution to using xvesa with serial mice.  
> I think it basically involves making /dev/mouse a symlink to
> /dev/ttySX 

I noticed that Xvesa automatically picked up the mouse from
/dev/mouse (which is what BL2 does too).  I assumed that the
-mouse parameter would also do that (but I never tried it).
Thanks for pointing out the bug -- it could save me bashing
my head against it further down the line.

Cheers,
Steven