It's been my experience that switching a UEFI machine to legacy mode can lead to strange behaviours. Every UEFI firmware builder has their own ideas about what to put in their Compatibility Support Modules.
The best course of action is to leave the machine in UEFI mode and do a UEFI-compatible hard drive install. Contrary to current forum opinion, this is not a big deal.
How do we get graphics cards working with Puppy?
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Mike Walsh
- Posts: 6351
- Joined: Sat 28 Jun 2014, 12:42
- Location: King's Lynn, UK.
@ Bill:-rcrsn51 wrote:It's been my experience that switching a UEFI machine to legacy mode can lead to strange behaviours. Every UEFI firmware builder has their own ideas about what to put in their Compatibility Support Modules.
The best course of action is to leave the machine in UEFI mode and do a UEFI-compatible hard drive install. Contrary to current forum opinion, this is not a big deal.
You mentioned something about this a couple or three weeks ago. When you say a "UEFI-compatible hard drive install", what, exactly, are we talking about here? 'Mainstream' distros? Puppies? (I hope so!) Only 'newer' Puppies, with all the efi.img/vesamenuc32 stuff? Or can this be done in such a way that any Puppy could conceivably run..?
I found that most of the older Pups appear to be looking for 'Vesa BIOS extensions', which UEFI, seemingly, doesn't have. I'm getting the distinct impression that hardware-wise, I am going to be limited to only recent Pups... (*sigh*)
More detail on this would be very much appreciated, please.
Mike.
A "UEFI-compatible hard drive" means a small fat32 boot partition containing the requisite EFI folder and a GRUB2-style grub.cfg file. There is no need to make the drive "bootable" by writing code to its MBR, a la Grub4Dos. (Although a USB drive can be simultaneously bootable by both methods.)
Within that structure you can install any Linux you want, including Puppy. This is explained in the notes for the stretch-live-frugal-install tool. It can also do a Puppy frugal install and convert the legacy GRUB menu.lst code to GRUB2.
But if you want to run older Puppies that need VESA, and running them under UEFI cannot find a compatible driver that works with your modern video hardware, then you probably need Legacy Mode.
But you need to ensure that your modern Puppies are not also using the VESA driver. If so, you would be crippling their video performance.
If you really want to keep running old Puppies, get a recycled Core2Duo machine for a few dollars/pounds.
Within that structure you can install any Linux you want, including Puppy. This is explained in the notes for the stretch-live-frugal-install tool. It can also do a Puppy frugal install and convert the legacy GRUB menu.lst code to GRUB2.
But if you want to run older Puppies that need VESA, and running them under UEFI cannot find a compatible driver that works with your modern video hardware, then you probably need Legacy Mode.
But you need to ensure that your modern Puppies are not also using the VESA driver. If so, you would be crippling their video performance.
If you really want to keep running old Puppies, get a recycled Core2Duo machine for a few dollars/pounds.
All I will add is about the Intel graphics drivers.
The integrated graphics, in the intel processors, are only going to use intel graphics drivers, to run a normal booted Puppy version.
That is what you want, to get full graphics features, of the integrated GPU.
They really only got these drivers working, very good, with the latest version(s).
That latest version, you should have in the latest, newest versions of Puppy.
The Intel driver will provide complete support for all features.
Also, need to be using a 4 or 5 series Linux kernel.
There is stuff, in the kernel, that helps to properly drive the graphics.
All graphics hardware, for about as long has there has been graphics hardware, will support Vesa graphics features.
Vesa is a kind of default, universal, minimum graphics driver.
Example:
When computer first boots.
The first few things you see, are showing, using Vesa graphics.
When Xserver starts, it switches to the more hardware specific driver.
You can really see this happen, when booting Bionicpup64 8.0.
About running older versions of Puppy.
So, running with Vesa driver is possible. The graphics hardware will support it.
For intel integrated graphics, that Vesa driver may just be the best one to use.
Older or very old versions of Puppy, will have the older intel driver or may not have the intel driver.
Remember, the very first few intel drivers were junk.
Also, the Linux kernel 1 and 2 series, is missing the new or newest stuff, for integrated intel graphics.
The other hardware could be an issue.
Probably the biggest problem will be WIFI hardware support and Audio hardware support.
Keyboard and mouse support, is very basic, and has not changed much. They should just work.
The integrated graphics, in the intel processors, are only going to use intel graphics drivers, to run a normal booted Puppy version.
That is what you want, to get full graphics features, of the integrated GPU.
They really only got these drivers working, very good, with the latest version(s).
That latest version, you should have in the latest, newest versions of Puppy.
The Intel driver will provide complete support for all features.
Also, need to be using a 4 or 5 series Linux kernel.
There is stuff, in the kernel, that helps to properly drive the graphics.
All graphics hardware, for about as long has there has been graphics hardware, will support Vesa graphics features.
Vesa is a kind of default, universal, minimum graphics driver.
Example:
When computer first boots.
The first few things you see, are showing, using Vesa graphics.
When Xserver starts, it switches to the more hardware specific driver.
You can really see this happen, when booting Bionicpup64 8.0.
About running older versions of Puppy.
So, running with Vesa driver is possible. The graphics hardware will support it.
For intel integrated graphics, that Vesa driver may just be the best one to use.
Older or very old versions of Puppy, will have the older intel driver or may not have the intel driver.
Remember, the very first few intel drivers were junk.
Also, the Linux kernel 1 and 2 series, is missing the new or newest stuff, for integrated intel graphics.
The other hardware could be an issue.
Probably the biggest problem will be WIFI hardware support and Audio hardware support.
Keyboard and mouse support, is very basic, and has not changed much. They should just work.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected
YaPI(any iso installer)
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected
YaPI(any iso installer)