Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 10:29:26 +0200
To: Kendall Bennett <KendallB@scitechsoft.com>
Cc: Tomas Carnecky <tom@dbservice.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: my opinion about VGA devices
Message-ID: <20041022082926.GA15661@hh.idb.hist.no>
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From: Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no>
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On Wed, Oct 20, 2004 at 10:27:08AM -0700, Kendall Bennett wrote:
[...]
> As for the framebuffer console, it exists purely to get high resolution 
> text consoles working with basic graphics capabilities. It was never 
> intended to be a complete graphics environment, but just the console that 
> can be used in graphics modes. The original versions of the framebuffer 
> console code were developed not for x86 machines but for non-x86 machines 
> that did not have any VGA capabilities at all (ie: Mac's). For Linux to 
> work on such machines, the console needed to be able to output text in 
> graphics modes since that is what the machines booted in. Once this was 
> done for non-x86 boxes, it was realised this would be a 'cool' feature 
> for x86 machines for two reasons. 1 - you get a nice high resolution text 
> console, way better than VGA text mode and, 2 - you can display the cool 
> penguin logo ;-)

And last but not least - you can have several such framebuffers in a
single machine, possibly for multi-user purposes.  VGA
wants to be the only one of its kind . . .

Helge Hafting
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