Re: SVGA kernel chipset drivers.

Albert Cahalan (albert@ccs.neu.edu)
Thu, 6 Jun 1996 12:52:25 -0400 (EDT)

From: pp@netppl.fi (Pekka Pietik{inen)
> On Jun 6, 1:14am, Jamie Lokier wrote:
>
>> Lots of people don't use X, because it uses lots of memory (only a
>> problem for small machines), and because some people don't like it. I
>> personally don't use X except when I have to, simply because, with my
>> low-quality monitor, it gives me eye strain and a headache. (Guaranteed,
>> after a couple of hours). Text mode is fine. Thus I would very much
>> dislike being forced to use the X GUI to spawn graphics programs.
>
> IMHO the best option would be a XFree86 Lite (and a normal one
> that people with lots of memory could use) There are a lot of
> completely unused (for most people that is) extensions and
> support for zillions of boards in the current X servers.
> XFree86 should be changed to do something like AccelX, which
> has the drivers for the boards as modules it loads on the fly.

Yes, those of us in the 8-bit text world often buy cheap hardware.

> Improving XFree86 like this instead of a linux-only solution like
> GGI would benefit the other free x86 *nixes as well.

Inproving ufs support makes it easy to convert to Linux.
Then all the other free x86 *nixes will die :-)
World domination - fast! Really, the others don't matter.

> There should also be a fullscreen program running on top of X
> that would behave and look just like the current text-mode, VC's etc.
> (with some extensions that are not possible in text-mode). The same
> program would work on any other box running X, so we could all enjoy
> the nice textmode linux has on every machine we use ;)

Sort of an xterm that emulates the Linux console instead of vt100/tek?
I think you lose the BLINK attribute, because that would require either
a very fast system or a palette video mode. You do get better fonts.
For speed this could be built directly into the X server.

Still, what do you do with a kernel oops while in graphics mode?
What happens when the X server dies because it used COW memory after
the system ran out of swap? What about video accelerators that need
an IRQ for best performance? What if your video card needs DMA?
I've only seen two answers, one of which puts the X server in the
kernel. No thanks, I'll take GGI instead.