4 Sep 2000 cpw   » (Apprentice)

OK. Mandrake 7.1. Kinda pretty. Some odd dependancies and package categorizations, some of which I can think of explanations for. Their XFree86 4.0 configure program is a little on the pathetic side, but then again it's very new. (It wouldn't believe my 32MB TNT2 Ultra could do 1280x1024x32, when it actually goes way, way beyond that.)

XFree86 4.0 is a little different and a little broken. Changing back to text VCs doesn't (fortunately, changing back from that to X does), and I've had to tweak my DPI settings again. Does anyone know if the VESA DDC standards include a way for the monitor to tell the system its physical size? mail cpw at catenoid dot com if you know the answer (or just to say 'Hi!').

Fortunately, this appears to be 4.0, so maybe I'll get VCs back if I can upgrade to 4.0.1.

I still think that the kernel should be able to arbitrate access to the video hardware, so you can run multiple buggy graphics systems and have the kernel wrest the video hardware from one and give it to the other. I suspect the GGI people said similar things, though, and Linus didn't like it much. Clearly he needed to play more svgalib games, which would quite frequently do nasty things if you tried to change VC while they were running.

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