On Fri, Mar 11, 2005 at 06:03:20PM +0000, James Simmons wrote: > > > > > Thats why moving the eye candy console into user space is such a good > > > > idea. You don't have to run it 8) It also means that the console > > > > development is accessible to all the crazy rasterman types. > > > > > > Yep. The basic console we already have. Everyone who wants eye candy can > > > switch > > > from basic console to user space console in early userspace. > > > > > > > Heh, I'm afraid it does not work like that. Anyone who wants eye-candy > > simply applies broken patch to their kernel... unless their distribution > > applied one > > already. > > > > Situation where we have one working eye-candy patch would certainly > > be an improvement. > > Why do we need patches in the kernel. Just set you config to > CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE, CONFIG_FB, CONFIG_INPUT and don't set fbcon or > vgacon. Then have a userspace app using /dev/fb and /dev/input create a > userland console. There is no need to do special hacks in the kernel.
Putting it in userland would make it impossible to debug what's wrong with the system if there's a kernel error, since userland will die long before it can spit out anything useful. The primary purpose of these things is to make a distribution look pretty while booting. Lots of people complain that Linux distros look "old fashioned" or something because they don't show little dancing girls during early boot. I should think the primary features you need here are: * Can display some pretty looking thing with a logo * If there's a problem during boot (userspace error, oops, panic, etc.) then it should become a regular console able to scroll back over the boot-time spew. I don't think a user-space version can do that for anything except userspace errors, so a kernel console is better. -J - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/