Re: development of framebuffer driver hi res console

On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 12:53 +0800, Wilkinson, Alex wrote:
> 0n Tue, May 20, 2008 at 09:19:43AM -0700, Eric Anholt wrote: 
> 
>     >On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 09:46 +0200, Philip Paeps wrote:
>     >> On 2008-05-16 19:15:19 (+0800), ketracel <ketracel_at_internode.on.net> wrote:
>     >> > Any FreeBSD developers out there working on a Framebuffer driver which
>     >> > provides modern high resolution modes (including widescreen) for the system
>     >> > console?
>     >> 
>     >> Not specifically working on a high-res framebuffer, but I'm working on
>     >> divorcing the framebuffer from syscons.  Once that work is done, it should be
>     >> possible to write more "advanced" framebuffer drivers.
>     >
>     >And the graphics developers are already porting their drivers to the
>     >kernel to provide the framebuffer part.  What it would take to port that
>     >to FreeBSD has been outlined elsewhere.
> 
> Can someone actually define what is meant as "framebuffer" as opposed to VESA ?
> 
> I have physically seen OSs such as gentoo that have a framebuffer (pretty
> consoles) but I have never ever known what a "framebuffer" is in the context of
> VTYs.
> 
> Anyone care to post a nutshell summary ?

A framebuffer's a collection of pixels.  For consoles, that means not
VGA where you store a collection of characters that are looked up
through a font to produce pixels.

For DRM modesetting, we don't use VESA at all, since it's a terrible
interface and routinely under-tested for modern chips (since Windows
doesn't use it, it doesn't really work).  Instead, we write native
device-specific modesetting, with all the featureset and power savings
of the native X driver you've been running in the past.

-- 
Eric Anholt                             anholt_at_FreeBSD.org
eric_at_anholt.net                         eric.anholt_at_intel.com