[GLLUG] Re: Booting into text mode

Sean picasso@madflower.com
Thu, 14 Feb 2002 11:57:44 -0500 (EST)


I have two questions. one is if downloading is a problem, I have a copy of
rh 6.1 and 6.2 somewhere that I can burn a copy if that is desired. Would
that work?

Second, I would run xfree 3.x series just because 4.x seemed doggy to me
and I have a similar machine with a similarly shitty v-card (trident 1
meg) although if they have made significant strides in the 4.x series for
the S3 I wouldnt bother with 3.x.



On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, Matt Graham wrote:

> On Thursday 14 February 2002 14:49, Melson, Paul wrote:
> > No, but the S3 chipset will display VESA framebuffer modes.  Anything
> > that doesn't have GL support of one form or another is better off,
> > IMHO, if it's used in vfb mode - both for the kernel and X display.
>
> I'm afraid I can't agree with that.
>
> The main problem is that the VESA framebuffer is *unaccelerated*.
> Every bit that you bang into the framebuffer has to be handled directly
> by the CPU.  Doing something as simple as dragging a window around in X
> (when "display window contents while dragging" is on) will slow the
> system to the point of unusability on a K6-2 400 with an ATi Mach64
> card if you're trying to use the framebuffer.  And even if you're not
> doing much, your GUI will feel like it's on a tranquilizer overdose.
> Nobody likes that.