On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 05:06, Alex Chudnovsky wrote: > On Sunday 08 December 2002 12:38, James Sparenberg wrote: > > On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 01:37, Alex Chudnovsky wrote: > > > I agree completely. What lacks sorely in XFree86, IMHO, is the fallback > > > mechanism - if this driver doesn't work, use another driver, and if > > > nothing works, use some worst case default ( 640x480 generic VGA driver > > > or VESA FB driver for videocard, autoprobe for mice). As in (cough) > > > Windows. Anyway, it is pretty hard these days to find EGA card or (cough) > > > CGA card. > > > > This is also a position that could help when say replacing a blown video > > card. Many is the time that once I got "something" working, and could > > then adjust from there, to get a nice product. For ex-windytes (windows > > users) the ability to limp into a visible mode and then properly adjust > > with MCC would be a really big help when changing hardware etc. > > Yes, and not only that. My wet dream for successful Linux desktop is XFree86 > not needing configuration file at all - i.e it should use one if it finds it, > but if it finds nothing, then it should be as follows : > - Video card is autoprobed, if the suitable driver found, it is used, or > generic VESA, or generic VGA. > - Mice are autoprobed, all mice found are used. > > And about mice : > Why should one re-run XFdrake anew or manually change XF86Config-4 if all he > does is just replace some PS/2 mouse with some new USB mouse? IMHO, mice > should be autoprobed. OTOH, if XF86Config-4 contains mouse definition, it > should be used, but if it is incorrect, it should be considered omitted, > warning should be issued, and mice should be autoprobed.
I'm reminded here of something that happened real world. A friend said that the old computer her kids used (they where 4 and 5) to play some educational games stopped working, but only on the games. I grabbed my trusty Slack CD2 put it in booted from it and started booting to various modes. What I found was 800x600 mode would snow crash, but it worked fine in all others (the card was going bad.) Saved her a ton of money getting either a new box or having a shop repair it, and was a really fast way to diagnose the problem... Simple thing but it sure was nice to have something I didn't have to "think about" I could just run the tests straight up. All drivers auto detected all I had to do was startx choose mode 800x600 1024x768 whatever and if I had a screen ... it was good. Frame buffer is also nice when you don't have a clue as to what the video card is. (I've got a firewall like this I maintain for a friend.) The fact that Slack can go to a "generic" driver when all else fails saved another card/computer from the dump. Mice... YES .... it's been a long time (maybe around 6.2 or so) it seems since MDK didn't detect my mouse right during install.... should be able to check changes during boot or via command line no problem.. Heck if it detected my 3 button as a two button at least I'd have a mouse to run mouseconfig with to get it perfect. James
