Release Candidates :: DSL-2.0RC1



Could the Broadcom 5700 module (ref bcm5700.tar.gz) be included with DSL 2.0 since the Intel 855 graphics chipset is so common now in laptops?

This would avoid all the messing about with XFree86.
Considering that DSL does not inlude any graphics drivers at all currently, nor does it include a X server than can use X modules, there is really no reason to include a graphics module.

Xvesa and Xfbdev are monolithic X servers, configured entirely at run time with runtime parameters.

~J.P.
The problem with the i855 chipset is that it does not properly support VESA graphics modes besides 640x480x16

This is Intel's fault and not DSL or the XVesa developers.

Intel appears to have fixed this problem in their i915 chipsets because they work fine with DSL Xvesa video.

In theory, it should be possible to compile an Xi810 TinyX server that could be provided by myDSL with little or no configuration.

However, neither myself nor John have been able to get this server to compile properly.

If you want to have a go at it, visit the freedesktop.org site and grab the source code.
Ignore my ignorance, but why can't we use binaries for tinyx from www.xfree86.org?  I don't have a laptop or the card in question, but they do have binaries for our level of glib (2.0 from sudo dpkg -l | grep glib if I didn't do that wrong).  The package I looked at was  Xtinyx.tgz.  It contained a larger Xfbdev and Xvesa than we use in dsl, but also had an Xi810 binary (about 800K).  Too big to be in the base dsl (?) but maybe it could be done as a remaster?  Is is possible to restart the xserver using a modified startx script to load the Xi810 server instead of Xvesa???  How much of the XFree86 stuff would need to change?
I have never gotten the binaries to work without getting segmentation faults or PAM errors.

Maybe something has changed and the latest ones now work with DSL.  The only way to know for sure is to try them.

FYI,  there is no guarantee that the Xi810 server will work fine with the Intel i845/855 chipset.

Since I was never able to test this server with the chipsets in question, the answer is unknown by me.

You don't need to modify startx.  Instead, all you need to do is modify your /home/dsl/.xserverrc file and replace the "Xvesa" with "Xi810" or instead the full part to your Xi810 file.  For example /home/dsl/myservers/Xi810
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