Barry, how did you get Xvesa to work with Puppy?
Posted: Sun 19 Jun 2005, 12:35
Barry, please let me give you a little background to my question first.
As I'm sure you're aware, Xvesa, and therefore Puppy, often doesn't work correctly with Intel's i810-family of graphics chips (these chips are quite usual in modern PCs and especially in laptops as they are cheaper and more power-efficient than add-on graphics chips).
Distros I've tested using XFree86 are able to support the i810-family with no difficulty at all. Just as an illustration, I'm writing these words using Kanotix (a Knoppix derivative) in 1280x1024x16 resolution on a 17" screen connected to a laptop with just such a graphics chip. Worked straight-out-of-the-box.
Contrast that to what Puppy offers on this same hardware: At best 640x480x16, excluding the terrible pseudocolour resolutions. At this resolution, most applications open windows that are larger than the size of the desktop, making the whole setup quite impractical.
OK, so what's my point? Well, I really like Puppy and I'd like to be able to run Puppy on my laptop. However, I've scoured Puppy's forum for help and posted messages about this problem with Xvesa. I've gotten some responses (including some from others in the same boat) but unfortunately no suggestions for solutions. I'm also aware that, due to size constraints, you haven't included other video drivers in Puppy.
Now, to what I really wanted to say, I found a reference to another kdrive server, the Xi810, on the internet. This sounds like a driver that was made to work with i810 chips. I'm not suggesting you include this driver in Puppy, but instead, make it available for testing with Puppy.
This may just be the solution that many of us with i810-equipped PCs are looking for. I would be happy to test the driver on my i810 hardware.
However, if the driver needs to be compiled first, I should point out that I'm mainly hardware-oriented and have very little experience in compiling under Linux.
Some questions:
- Is Xi810 available from the same place you got Xvesa?
- Would it need to be compiled to work with Puppy in a "Puppy compilation environment"?
- If so, could one of the developers compile it and make it available for download?
- Would it need to be re-compiled for new versions of Puppy?
Looking forward to your answers and eventually testing the driver in Puppy.
/Paul
As I'm sure you're aware, Xvesa, and therefore Puppy, often doesn't work correctly with Intel's i810-family of graphics chips (these chips are quite usual in modern PCs and especially in laptops as they are cheaper and more power-efficient than add-on graphics chips).
Distros I've tested using XFree86 are able to support the i810-family with no difficulty at all. Just as an illustration, I'm writing these words using Kanotix (a Knoppix derivative) in 1280x1024x16 resolution on a 17" screen connected to a laptop with just such a graphics chip. Worked straight-out-of-the-box.
Contrast that to what Puppy offers on this same hardware: At best 640x480x16, excluding the terrible pseudocolour resolutions. At this resolution, most applications open windows that are larger than the size of the desktop, making the whole setup quite impractical.
OK, so what's my point? Well, I really like Puppy and I'd like to be able to run Puppy on my laptop. However, I've scoured Puppy's forum for help and posted messages about this problem with Xvesa. I've gotten some responses (including some from others in the same boat) but unfortunately no suggestions for solutions. I'm also aware that, due to size constraints, you haven't included other video drivers in Puppy.
Now, to what I really wanted to say, I found a reference to another kdrive server, the Xi810, on the internet. This sounds like a driver that was made to work with i810 chips. I'm not suggesting you include this driver in Puppy, but instead, make it available for testing with Puppy.
This may just be the solution that many of us with i810-equipped PCs are looking for. I would be happy to test the driver on my i810 hardware.
However, if the driver needs to be compiled first, I should point out that I'm mainly hardware-oriented and have very little experience in compiling under Linux.
Some questions:
- Is Xi810 available from the same place you got Xvesa?
- Would it need to be compiled to work with Puppy in a "Puppy compilation environment"?
- If so, could one of the developers compile it and make it available for download?
- Would it need to be re-compiled for new versions of Puppy?
Looking forward to your answers and eventually testing the driver in Puppy.
/Paul