Re: Plan of action for dev-install

[Tim Thomson <tim.thomson@usa.net>]

(CC'd to seul-dev-ui)

On 26 Jan 1998 jfm2@club-internet.fr wrote:

> 7)  X setup.
> 
> I want to imitate RedHat who is resorting to automatic hardware
> detection.  Unless there is something better in the interim we would
> use their software (it is GPLed).  I think we have better to do than
> to reinvent the wheel.  There is a thing where we can improve on them:
> people getting only VGA16 (as good as unsupported) will be told why.
> I am tired of seeing posts in news groups of people who have fought
> for days getting only 16 colors, low res and slowness when the problem
> is than their card is not supported.
> 
> If the card is unknown we will tell them, if the version of XFree is
> old we will advise to upgrade (there are still people fighting Matrox
> Mystiques with XFree 3.2), if the card is from a manufacturer who does
> not release the doc (and the version is not old) we will tell about it
> to the user and, perhaps, we should tell him where to send flames.
> Angry _customers_ can do wonders for making a company change policy.
> :-)

Is it at all possible to get X-Win to use modular video drivers, rather
than have lots of servers floating around?
This would be nice, because as Linux grows in popularity, Video card
manufactures could write their own drivers  :)
If they knew they had to do a whole X-Server, they might be discouraged
from supporting it themselves  :(

This would make it easier to install, as there would be only one Server to
install, you still need to detect, to load the driver though.

Please don't flame me if this is totally stupid :) just with all this talk
of modular kernels, and modular programs, I though a modular X-server
would be nice :)

Also, if this could be implemented, would it then be possible to write a
front end for Windoze drivers, so you don't NEED a specific X-Win driver.
You could then have a warning "Using a Windoze driver will give poorer
results for running X-Win, although it will still run better than with
Windoze"   ;-)

I don't know much of the difficulties involved, so please don't flame me
:)

-Tim.

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