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[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

startx -- /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa -screen 800x600x24

This gives 24-bit color on my computer with S3 86c964 (that also works 
with the S3 accel driver) and on the SiS AGP card that only does 8-bit 
color with XSVGA and for which there is no driver.

I will now be able to use Trident or Tseng cards (which work with svgalib 
- most of my other cards including S3 will not) and S3Virge and Alliance 
and SiS and ....   The Trident and Tseng have the advantage of displaying 
256 colors with DOS ghostscript.  Nothing will do so for me with linux 
ghostscript (console mode).    

It was far easier to set up, too.  And easy to specify just the resolution 
and depth that you want.

The SiS displays a green screen in icewm for color depths 4-11.
The S3 displays grey for depths 2, 4 and 11, but for depth 8 it gives me 
stripes.  When I type Ctl-Alt-Backspace the stripes go away and I get some 
odd colors.  Another Ctl-Alt-Backspace removes X.   I would have blamed 
this on monitor problems except for the need to exit X twice.  As the 
authors said, it is a bit buggy.

I have not tried other cards yet.  I don't care if 8-bit color works when 
11-bit will work.  I can always use XSVGA for 8-bit but why bother.

S3 cards are the only PCI cards I have, except for one Alliance, that go
to 1600 resolution so I will live with the stripes in 8-bit color.

Has anyone else noticed odd behavior at 8-bit color?

Instead of typing out the whole line I put some aliases in .profile for 
various resolutions at 1024, and for 1024 at 8-bit color (to speed up 
browsing).

You can run Xvesa from any location if you specify the location.  It is 
not enough to have it on the path.  /tmp/Xvesa will also work.
startx -- /tmp/Xvesa

So I put Xvesa on floppy disk (where it became xvesa - DOS floppy disk) 
and took it to my computer with RAMdisk BL2 and discovered linux was happy 
to copy TO the disk but won't copy back FROM it.    I will take other 
people's words for it that it can be used with the RAMdisk version.

The icewm screen is dark blue-turquoise at all color depths 12 and up.  I 
had to display a photo with xv to distinguish between color depths.
At 8-bit the colors look blotchy.  I think XV did a nicer job 
approximating them than the Opera video driver did.  Opera may go for 
speed instead.

This certainly makes it harder to choose a video card for linux since they 
probably ALL work fine.  I will select for speed, I guess.

I have 2 Creative and 2 Vibra cards.  Two cards with identical CT numbers 
have different chips.  I will experiment with sound and report back.  
There are apparently sound drivers for things other than Creative.