Re: netinst on old dell hardware
On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 07:34:28PM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 03:03:28PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> > * note: I don't know that X is involved in painting the screen graphics on
> > boot up from the Debian install CDs. When I think about it, X seems like
> > an awfully heavy weight way to paint a picture. Suffice to say I don't want
> > and have never selected graphical install.
>
> Have you heard of the framebuffer? No X involved.
The Framebuffer and X are not mutually exclusive. The framebuffer is,
basically, a non-accelerated graphics device. Most PCs these days have
two options for displaying graphics: calculate the entire image on the
CPU/main RAM and then send a series of pixels to the framebuffer - the
framebuffer will then hold these pixels until the next monitor sync
comes along. Alternatively, you can send a series of commands to a
graphics processor and have that calculate the final image. This, of
course, frees up the CPU, hence the acceleration.
X, on the other hand, is a networked display server. It is mostly an
abstraction layer. Application programmers can develop their programs
without having to worry about whether the target device is a
framebuffer, a GPU or even a different computer somewhere else on the
network.
It is perfectly possible to run X on a framebuffer - for computers that
only have a framebuffer this is the ONLY way to run an X server.
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