On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 01:53:32PM +0100, o jordan wrote: > Is it too late to get some PowerPC changes into the yaboot options on > the live/desktop ISOs? > > I have an idea to build back in the legacy nvidia framebuffers into > the PowerPC kernel. Whilst this is a backwards step in many respects, > it is the only way (I can think of) to get over the 16 colour > limitation of the openfirmware framebuffer. Currently if you turn off > kernel modesetting with nouveau (and this it seems is a necessity now > for many cards of some vintage) you are thrown into a desktop with > only 16 colours on PowerPC and this is a largely unusuable desktop. > > As this kernel change will disable KMS (which we don't want to do for > every nvidia card) the boot options need updating so that the legacy > framebuffers are turned off by default: > > video=radeonfb:off video=rivafb:off video=nvidiafb:off > Since you cannot easily remove default yaboot parameters a new > 'failsafe' option would need to be created on the desktop ISO without > these parameters. This could replace the 'nosplash' option. The new > yaboot parameters would be: nomodeset vt.handoff=7 I know you don't > think vt.handoff=7 makes any sense with yaboot, but it does actually > boot you into a higher colour depth than you would without it. This > solves the problem of the installer windows not appearing in 8 bit > pseudo colour. I think I can create a patch for yaboot-installer (to > also introduce a failsafe option on an installed system), but I have > no clue what files are involved in the creation of the ISOs. If you > can point me in the right direction then I can take (a rather > uneducated) look at them and see if I can come up with the necessary > changes myself. Of course this all depends on getting the PowerPC > kernel changed, something that I have struggled to do in the past. > Like yourself they are very cautious about changes. I would need help > from somebody within Canonical to support the kernel change. These > changes would not improve the out-of-the box everything working 100% > on the first boot support of the PowerPC port (that can only come from > the kernel/radeon/nouveau developers), but the creation of a failsafe > mode would make the radeon and nvidia user experience much better.
To be honest, as I think I said before: I'm not going to touch these options at all without review from the kernel and X teams (CCed). If they say it's necessary, then sure; but I would rather that somebody first checked whether this is a consequence of a bug we can fix, because it's always better for the software to work by default than to require boot parameters. Regards, -- Colin Watson [[email protected]] -- Ubuntu-x mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-x
