Re: GGI Project Unhappy On Linux

Geert Uytterhoeven (Geert.Uytterhoeven@cs.kuleuven.ac.be)
Sat, 28 Mar 1998 16:47:47 +0100 (MET)

On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, Erik Andersen wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 1998 at 05:50:42PM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > > How does fbcon work with hardware acceleration? [Once we solve
> > > acceleration issue somehow, we can get rid of GGI and use fbcon
> > > instead. But - I'm not sure if such thing even can be done. With
> > > cards having critical registers neer non-critical ones :-( ]
> >
> > >From user space, the X server mmaps the MMIO registers.
> >
> > For text console acceleration (mainly scrolling), the kernel knows how to do
> > simple blits for some chipsets. If no blit routines are available, it will use
> > the CPU.
>
> Hmm. Could fbcon be made to work _with_ libggi? That way the

That's perfectly possible.

> framebuffer's drawing and acceleration code could stay in the userspace
> libggi library -- not in the kernel. This move to a userspace libggi
> could also move the "blits for some chipsets" code already in the kernel
> out to userspace as well, so the kernel gets to use the nice, safe, sane
> svga card support from the ggi folks, the ggi folks stay happy because
> the Linux world finally apprecieates them, the X server folks get to
> focus on X windowing things (instead of graphics card support) because
> ALL Linux targets are just framebuffers, and Linus stays happy because
> the device abstraction stays the same as it is now.

People actually started working on a frame buffer device library, but it seems
the project died.

Greetings,

Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven                     Geert.Uytterhoeven@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
Wavelets, Linux/{m68k~Amiga,PPC~CHRP}  http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~geert/
Department of Computer Science -- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven -- Belgium




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