Theodore> If you make the routines VESA complaint, then they can't
Theodore> take advantage of any of the card-specific accelerated
Theodore> features. This means that performance of the X server
Theodore> will go *down* as a result.
Yes, but at least you can run X at all. I have an nfsroot setup here at
the office, where any of the other PCs can run Linux using mine as the
server, using a 16kB DOS program. This serves as a nice introduction to
Linux for those who want to play, without installing it. Unfortunately,
I can't impress everyone with a nice X setup because there is no X
server available for about half of the video cards :-(.
That said, VESA _could_ be done in user mode using vm86, the way dosemu
does it.
I'd like to see VESA SVGALIB and X support, just so that graphics can be
done on practically all Intel machines that run Linux. I'd also like to
see a VM simulated framebuffer for the same reason as DirectX: so that
programs can be written assuming modern video hardware, but be sure to
run with old hardware, even slowly.
-- Jamie