A conundrumForum: Hardware Talk Topic: A conundrum started by: GeoffUK Posted by GeoffUK on Nov. 10 2005,00:41
Many things in life puzzle me, but here (possibly) is an opportunity to make things clear.I've got a half working DSL onto an old IBM Thinkpad, through forums and thought I'll get the other half ...... hopefully! Currently it's booting from a created bootdisk from within another DSL host, and a DSL image on the hard disk. My conundrum is........ during boot sequence, all text is displayed perfecly clearly and full screen. Also the DSL/Tux?Credit Card logo is displayed in all it's glory. All this is lost as soon as the system reaches "X". So what am I actually running during the boot sequence ?? I guess It's some varient of Dos and inbuilt bios vga drivers but I'd like to know. Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Nov. 10 2005,01:15
at the boot: prompt, type
then choose Xfbdev as your X server when the xsetup.sh script runs, and your issues will be gone. And DSL is most definately NOT DOS. It is Linux. -J.P. Posted by GeoffUK on Nov. 10 2005,09:19
Thanks for the reply.My question was not intended as a "How can I.....?" but was more like "What's happening ?". The puzzle is not unique to DSL, and I have doubts about it being a Linux issue at heart. For example, another system, will go through the motions of loading SUSE Live complete with progress comments and graphical splash screens then fall down at the last hurdle with a "Sync out of range" error. So, if Suse isn't natively compatible with my monitor, how does it manage to display the boot sequence graphics? Similarly, the laptop is happy with DSL graphics during boot but needs coaxing back to life afterwards. Being curious, I'm wondering what video drivers are used during the start up sequence and I'll probably go on to be curious as to why they can't be used after instal. Posted by doobit on Nov. 10 2005,13:50
Your computer is having trouble with something called X. X is not a video driver, but a video server that can be configured for almost any video card. Do as SaidinUnleashed said and you will most likely see the GUI, depending on if you have enough RAM to support it.There are many graphical user interfaces for X. DSL uses FluxBox. Posted by GeoffUK on Nov. 10 2005,15:50
Again, I thank you for your reply.Perhaps I'm not explaining myself very well. This is just something that puzzles me. I can, through cheet codes and/or persistant instal get around/through this issue and I'm not looking for a "do this and it'll work" kind of answer... the system works, I'm replying through DSL and looking at what I'm typing through X. What puzzles (read intrigues) me, is the way reasonably high resolution graphics can be displayed during the boot sequence. That is before "X" is unleashed. During boot on the laptop I see the DSL/Tux/Creditcard logo. Similarly, during SUSE boot I see rolling meadows and a chameleon. I'd like to know how these images are being displayed. Posted by doobit on Nov. 10 2005,16:06
There is a basic VGA driver that's automatically loaded by your BIOS when you boot up. That's how it's also possible to see the BIOS do it's thing before the OS is even started loading.
Posted by GeoffUK on Nov. 10 2005,18:42
Thank you
Posted by fly on Dec. 03 2005,15:33
Isn't it just the vesa framebuffer they use? kinda like directfb? you can make some really cool graphics with that framebuffer device. I wonder why X hasn't embraced it yet... it sure is much faster than what they use.
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