There are two types of VTs - text and graphical. It is only practical to have a single graphical VT because of the complexity of state swapping a graphical VT at VT swap.
How about this for a new way to look at the problem? Current text VTs call into the kernel and ask it to draw on the video hardware. This could easily be replaced with a system where text VTs draw to a piece of RAM instead of the hardware. This is a small piece of RAM since these are text VTs. You would physically login into the graphical VT. This login could run xserver or a simple terminal emulator. Now build a system for compositing the text VT buffers onto the real physical screen. To emulate the current system Atl-x would select a different VT. Then on each vertical retrace extract the VTs buffer and paint it on the screen. Forward key strokes into it's input queue. A text VT without a task attached to it would draw a login display. I can use this same scheme from xserver. Each text VT would appear as a window. When you log out of the graphical console the tasks associated with a text VT don't get killed. SAK does not kill them either. This scheme is very close to what we have now. The only thing that is changed is that there is no way for a text VT to write to the graphics hardware without the help of a process running on the graphical console. The advantage of this scheme is that there only a single login ever on the graphics hardware. In a multiuser scheme there needs to be a more complex interface. The text VTs have to track who created them. You wouldn't want another user attaching an active text VT that isn't theirs. --- Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Iau, 2004-05-20 at 01:55, Jon Smirl wrote: > > It's not going to allow multiple login prompts on different VTs on the same > > head. > > In which case its completely useless. You might want to get away from a > kernel virtualisation of video services but you just can't do it. You > can pull a *lot* of the fancier stuff out of kernel as you've suggested > but the basic VT and memory management just won't fit your model > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Oracle 10g > Get certified on the hottest thing ever to hit the market... Oracle 10g. > Take an Oracle 10g class now, and we'll give you the exam FREE. > http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=3149&alloc_id=8166&op=click > -- > _______________________________________________ > Dri-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel ===== Jon Smirl [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Oracle 10g Get certified on the hottest thing ever to hit the market... Oracle 10g. Take an Oracle 10g class now, and we'll give you the exam FREE. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=3149&alloc_id=8166&op=click -- _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
