the fbdev driver uses absolutely no capabilities of the video card except
those exposed by the fbdev API. Thus, any acceleration/video overlay has to
be done at the kernel level. That is, using fbdev with vesafb results in
unaccelerated video, but using it with, say, rivafb (a kernelized version of
the nv driver) or radeonfb or another accelerated fbdev, would have
accelerated video (although no DRI, etc on Radeons, MGAs or R128s...) Of
course, the real X driver will almost always perform better, but...
-----Original Message-----
From: Oliver Scholz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 4:58 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Newbie]total system-crash (conflict with VESA Fb?)
"Sprague, IT3" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Actually, fbdev is a driver for X 4.x, so if you have
/usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86
> and /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/modules/drivers/fbdev.o (or similar... I have to
> double-check that), it should work. I have no experience with setting it
up
> (I've done 3.3.6's XF86_FBDev once, and that took some serious
> voodoo-fried-chicken-with-almonds hacking, using matroxfb, though.), so
you
> might wanna see if there are any fbdev mages around.
Again you have saved me a lot of time with this information. I found
fbdev.o and it works now.
I have set up the old XF86_FBDev, too. Two times for two Laptops. For
a XFree-and-hardware-idiot like me this server was a good thing.
fbdev is fine. For my purposes the speed under X is o.k. and switching
between X and text console is much smoother now ... However, since I
had to alter the color-depth of the kernel fb in order to get
True-Color under X, the text-console is now as slow as a
GUI-application when it comes to scrolling. :-/
However: that is maybe not the end of the story. I was wrong as I
said:
,----[ quoted from my previous mail ]
| (BTW: evidences acumulate. As stated before I have deactivated the
| kernel fb for testing purposes. Now I'm working on X for
| several hours,
| while running two instances of X on different ttys, changing
| to and fro
| between them and the text console very often. To put even the
| processor under stress I have a compile running all the time. Well,
| the processor cooler runs all the time, but no crashes.)
`----
Now I encountered a crash (the same symptoms) with the setting
mentioned in my previous mail. That is a total crash with X with
s3virge-driver and text console *without* VESA FB.
Although there seems to be a relation: without FB in the kernel it
took much longer for my system to crash.
Well, I will use the new setting (X with fbdev) very much for a
while. Let's see if I encounter crashes too.
I assume the following: fbdev as X-driver uses only a very small part
of the functionality of my video-card (resp.: lets the kernel deal
with my video-card and the kernel uses only a small part of the
functionality). Is this assumption correct?
Well if it is and if I encounter those crashes again, then I can
conclude that not my video card was the problem[1].
I'll post here again if that happens. I hope you will give me your advice
again. :)
Thank you so far.
Footnotes:
[1] Basically my card works. This same video-card caused no problems
with XFree 3.cannotremember and it causes no problems with Windows.
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