RobF
Group: Members
Posts: 22
Joined: July 2004 |
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Posted: Aug. 02 2004,03:39 |
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This thread has become so long that most of the facts have probably evaporated in the mind of the casual reader. Because of that I'd like to briefly summarize what has or has not been accomplished so far.
I have a budget Dell desktop with an Intel i845 graphics chipset integrated in the motherboard. I believe that DSL is a great Linux distro and that it would perfectly serve as a lean and mean learning distro that would allow you to get under the hood and work close to the system level. Since that is what I'm looking for, I've spent countless hours trying to get it to work on my hardware, for my own benefit as well as for the benefit of everybody else who uses that chipset or other members of that chipset family which can be found in tens of thousands of recent machines. This graphics hardware was introduced about two years ago, and it works without a problem with other full Linux distros under XFree86, at resolutions up to 1280x1024x32.
I also very much appreciate all the help I have received in this forum, in particular from cbagger. Unfortunately, so far we have not been able to find any video setup for the Kdrive X servers Xvesa and Xfbdev used by DSL that would provide usable X windows. The problem is that these X servers don't provide much support for the Intel hardware.
I also tested Feather Linux to see whether it had all the same problems as DSL. Feather is a close cousin of DSL, and in particular the X servers and video setup appear to be pretty much identical in the two distros, to the extent even of Feather borrowing the X Setup screens from DSL (with proper acknowledgement to DSL).
Imagine my surprise then when I finally discovered two video modes in Feather (of all the other modes - literally dozens - tested in DSL and Feather, with both Xvesa and Xfbdev, that did not work) that actually gave me a usable screen. They have the resolution I want (1024x768 or 800x600) but not the color depth I want (8 bit = 256 colors; I would rather like 16 bit), and they provide rather grainy images but at least the colors are finally right, and I feel I can actually work with those modes.
Imagine my surprise again when I then went back and tested these two modes on DSL and found that they did not work there. Given the fact that DSL and Feather are virtually identical in their X windows software, setup and configs, I would like to find out what the difference is that allows Feather to give me something workable whereas DSL fails in this regard. If this difference (which may well be a minor tweak) can be identified, then I might be able to get DSL to work for me as well. After all, Xfbdev supports these two modes on my hardware as is proven by the fact that Feather can run them without a problem.
If the needed tweak cannot be identified, then I'm just about ready to give up on DSL, and not only I would lose but potentially dozens or hundreds of people with an interest in DSL who have the Intel i810/845 hardware. I feel that there is a workable solution of this problem for DSL and that it is tantalizingly close. I would certainly be very happy if I finally get DSL to work on my machine.
Robert
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