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Sindi Keesan wrote:
>
> I have been confusing Xvesa with xfbdev, which does need 
> the framebuffer stuff (bare.i and devs.tgz installed).  

Also, in order to run framebuffer, you need a VESA 2.0
video card.  

Xvesa, on the other hand, does not use the framebuffer.
It runs on any old VESA card.  Apparently somebody even
got Xvesa to run on an old EGA card (non-VESA).

> if Xvesa is not going to give more than 8-bit color.  
> Steven, did you get more colors?

I don't know.  I can certainly see the difference between
16 colors and 256 colors, but beyond that it's all the
same to me.

> I had no idea that the DOS config.sys affected what 
> happens when you reboot in linux!  

Xvesa (Deli version) is quite raw and ill-mannered.  It's
more like a hack than a carefully crafted program.  It
crashes stupidly when it finds itself in an unexpected
situation and it doesn't clean up well on exit.

Xvesa may be OK for providing a universal GUI on a mini-
distribution, but it certainly isn't ready for prime time.

> Are you talking about running Xvesa in RAM here?

Both.  I ran Xvesa from the ramdisk (booted from the two-
floppy version of BL2) and from a HD installation.

> By copy, which file(s) do you need to actually run Xvesa?  

Just the Xvesa executable.  Nothing more.  BL2 ramdisk already 
has everything else you need to network to an X application 
server and run X programs from the ramdisk.  

Note 1: any system with X installed can serve X applications
--------------------------------------
export DISPLAY=address_of_X_terminal:0         
icewm
--------------------------------------
That will send icewm to the X terminal (which will give it 
access to everything else ).

Note 2:  BL2 ramdisk only has a limited number of network
modules.  If the system has a different type of network
card, it will be necessary to add the appropriate module
from Slackware 7.1.

> As James pointed out, the ramdisk version does not install 
> packages, but we could manually add files.

Xvesa is just a single file.  Mount the FD/HD where Xvesa
resides, copy to /tmp, gunzip if necessary, and execute.

> > (1) have more than 16mb RAM.
> > (2) have real DOS (or Win9x)
> 
> What is real DOS?  

A low-level DOS, not a DOS window in a GUI OS.

> What does the -- mean?  It is also found in startx -- -bpp16 .

man startx  (also:  man xinit)

> I thought kdrive was a version of tinyx and so was xvesa.  
> I am getting very confused.  

Yes, kdrive is derived from tinyx.  However, there are currently
*two* ways of displaying X from kdrive:  one uses the framebuffer
(which is a capability of VESA 2.0 video cards) and the other
uses the VESA routines directly (which is a capability of any
VESA video card).

> The latter does only 8-bit color.  Did Xvesa do more for you?

Don't know.  256 is plenty of colors for me -- I don't notice
when there are more.

> thanks for all the info on xvesa, which could bypass the most 
> aggravating and impossible part of getting X to work in at 
> least 256 colors.

Aggravating yes, impossible no.  And it's only aggravating the 
first time.  Once you figure out the correct HorizSync and Vert 
Refresh for the monitor, it's fine from then on (even when you
change video cards).  However, I can see that it would be
continually aggravating for somebody like you, who continually
gets different monitors to configure.
  
> We have one laptop with video that is not VESA 1.2 but it also 
> does not have enough RAM to run BL2, 

How much RAM?  I saw an account of somebody who ran Slackware
with Xvesa in 4mb RAM.  He moved the HD to different system,
installed everything there and then moved the HD back into
the laptop.

Cheers,
Steven