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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

Xvesa tends to crash when I exit it (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) even in BL2 when 
not running anything but rxvt.  It is rather unstable and easily upset.

I got the fonts working in BL2 with Xvesa.  I had messed up the symlink:

ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/fonts /var/X11R6/lib/fonts.

Opera apparently looks in /var not /usr for its fonts.

Opera for Windows offers Verdana.  The linux version does not, which 
confused me, probably because I have not loaded Verdana.  Is there a linux 
Verdana font somewhere?  It was designed specifically for screen 
legibility.  I chose Helvetica instead.

My Xvesa in BL2 setup requires about 1.5M of lib files, fonts (I loaded 
them all and will remove most of them eventually), and 1M of Xvesa, plus 
rxvt and xinit which are small.  It includes the dependencies for rxvt, 
Opera, and xv as well as Xvesa.  Also a minimal icewm without backgrounds 
or clocks or other little programs, or menu.  This is less than the 10MB 
you get if you load everything Steven suggested.  If anyone is interested 
I could package this eventually - just installpkg and add fonts.  Or use 
the scrawny Xvesa fonts if you have a magnifier.

After my first PS/2 mouse worked okay in SVGAlib (links2) with 
acceleration turned off but not in Xvesa (it acted accelerated, scooting
to the screen edge and staying there), I put on a 'Zenith' PS/2 mouse 
Model FDM-210 made in Taiwan.  This one does nothing at all in SVGAlib or 
X.   Move the mouse, the pointer does not move.

I then put on an 'HP' made in China and it works for everything.
I never had any problems yet with serial mice in linux.
Linux is fussier than DOS or Windows about its mice, apparently.
Why?

I also discovered why my Kingston ethernet card that uses tulip.o does not 
work in BL2 - it requires a later version of the driver than SW71 offers. 
I could attempt to compile my own module but I put in our last 3COM 3c509 
instead.

DOS sound is working much better now that Ron told me to update the SB16
drivers.  I updated to 1996 and my midi player works where it used to not 
work.  I will attempt linux sound again soon, the last obstacle to getting 
rid of Windows (Realaudio).  The computer stopped finding its hard drives 
as soon as I got DOS sound working but unplugging/replugging fixed that 
for a while.  I thought maybe the sound overstressed this computer, which 
has been through dead hard drive and killed fan already and can't 
recognize zimage using loadlin without help from Win98DOS.

What else do other BL users still need Windows for?  I used it only for 
Realaudio, CD-recording, scanner and reading WORD files.  Also for using 
the newer printers - next challenge.  How does one add a printer driver to 
gs?  Do I need to recompile it?

Ron fixed the missing /dev files problem with SB16 by installing devs.tgz.
Overkill but it was a lot faster than learning to make sound devices.
We have a book on DSP - digital signal processing.  The CD with it 
requires Windows or Mac :=(.

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org