Re: clearing the screen -> framebuffer insanity
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 06:19:21PM -0800, Joe Riel wrote:
> Just wondering, what is a framebuffer console?
> And how would I know whether I was using one?
It means that your text mode screens, instead of being a real text
mode, are actually graphics mode, with characters being displayed by
writing bitmaps to the screen. It exists to allow Linux to be usable
on non-PC machines that don't know what VGA is.
As a side effect it allows PCs to be configured to run pseudo-'text' modes
other than the standard 80x25. So does SVGATextMode, but using a real text
mode screen, so without the large overhead.
Unfortunately the appearance of framebuffer mode meant that whoever
was responsible for SVGATextMode dropped it in 1999, with the result
that newer video cards may be unsupported. I note that kernel 2.4.20
only has framebuffer listed under the "experimental options", so maybe
SVGATextMode will get going again?
If you have a PC, and want a change from 80x25, use SVGATextMode. If
it doesn't support your video card, hack it until it does.
To find out if you're running framebuffer: dmesg | grep -i vga
I think you get 'fb' somewhere in the output if you're using
framebuffer.
Pigeon
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