On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 12:33 PM, <rea...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I'm ashamed to admit I made the most basic mistake. I compiled uvesafb
>> as a module. Oops! Compiled it as "Y" instead of "M" and now I have a
>> pair of Tux sitting atop my kernel boot screen and no more 80x25
>> horror. :)
>
> Is there some difference in uvesafb and vesafb? I've always just ignored
> the uvesafb choice and used plain vesafb.
>
> I just assumed from the name of it and the menuconfig help on it that
> it was something only usable in `userspace'. I took that to mean
> after bootup.. something you'd do from the command line.
>
> Anyone here that can explain what the difference is.
According to the website:
uvesafb is a generic framebuffer driver for Linux systems and the
direct successor of vesafb-tng. Its main features are:
* works on non-x86 systems,
* the Video BIOS code is run in userspace by a helper application,
* can be compiled as a module,
* adjustable refresh rates with VBE 3.0-compliant graphic cards.
It also enumerates all of the supported modes when you cat
/sys/class/graphics/fb0/modes which is handy... no need for vga=0x382
or whatever. They are nice human-readable modes lik 1024x768-60 or
whatever.
You can also disable the framebuffer entirely or change modes from the
commandline once the system is up and running (maybe vesafb lets you
do that too, I'm not sure).
Now I just need to find a good consolefont that doesn't look
"squished" in 16:9 aspect ratio. Right now I'm using ter-112n (from
terminus-fonts) and it's pretty good but still a little too wide for
my taste.
Paul
