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Date:      Fri, 22 Sep 2000 15:44:14 +0200
From:      Graham Wheeler <gram@cequrux.com>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Framebuffer driver?
Message-ID:  <39CB622E.4B1A6BE4@cequrux.com>

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Hi all

In my neverending quest to get my lousy Compaq laptop's Synaptics touch
pad to work (a problem with which many of you are now familiar!), I
finally got around to installing Linux (Mandrake 7.1) a week ago. The
jury is still out on whether this is going to solve my problems - I have
found a kernel patch that seems to help, but I'm playing with too many
variables right now and need some time to be more systematic - but in
the process, I've found one feature of Linux that I really like, which
may be enough for me to keep using it on the laptop over FreeBSD. That
feature is the VESA framebuffer driver for the console, which allows me
to run my 800x600 LCD screen as a 100x35 console, with a very readable
font (better than any of the ones I've used on FreeBSD at 80x25). I
imagine this makes X run more slowly, as it fails to use any hardware
acceleration, but with a nice console like that my need for X is much
reduced.

There are a couple of other nice aspects - doing a `halt' actually
powers down the laptop, which isn't the case with FreeBSD (but maybe
I've just not configured apm properly on FreeSBD?). On the other hand,
I've failed thus far to get my sound (VIA82C686A) to work, while it
worked great on FreeBSD.

Anyway, my question is this: is anyone working on a similar frame buffer
driver for FreeBSD? 

regards
gram
-- 
Dr Graham Wheeler                        E-mail: gram@cequrux.com
Director, Research and Development       WWW:    http://www.cequrux.com
CEQURUX Technologies                     Phone:  +27(21)423-6065
Firewalls/VPN Specialists                Fax:    +27(21)424-3656


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