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VESA X.Org Driver Sees First Update In Three Years

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  • VESA X.Org Driver Sees First Update In Three Years

    Phoronix: VESA X.Org Driver Sees First Update In Three Years

    Should you find yourself using the xf86-video-vesa DDX for one reason or another, a new release is now available and it's the first in three years...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Last time I used it was over a decade ago when Xorg was called XFree86 and when I had to manually tweak the X config file to define my input and output devices. At the time I was using a proprietary driver stack and it took lots of fiddling to get it working. I'd use the vesa driver just for testing and to get an early working X session when installing a new distro. It was pretty useful. I used fluxbox quite a bit back then and IIRC, my desktop wasn't too slow when using Vesa.

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    • #3
      What’s VESA equivalent for UEFI in X.org. I tried getting the generic video working in UEFI booting, but failed.
      I know there’s something, because you need generic video in case you don’t have the driver yet. Even MacOS has it.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by garegin View Post
        What’s VESA equivalent for UEFI in X.org. I tried getting the generic video working in UEFI booting, but failed.
        I know there’s something, because you need generic video in case you don’t have the driver yet. Even MacOS has it.
        Not exactly sure what you mean by "generic video", but there's the efifb kernel driver and then you can use xf86-video-fbdev to run X on top of efifb.

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        • #5
          Ah, good old xf86-video-vesa. THE fallback solution at all times. If a display doesn't work with VESA the hardware is broken.
          I remember using it a couple of times, and it even kinda saved my bum, once.
          Sadly this driver might become more prominent as the old DDX drivers for old chips fade out since few om them are still maintained. This is even less fortunate since vesa provides no acceleration at all.
          Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Adarion View Post
            Sadly this driver might become more prominent as the old DDX drivers for old chips fade out since few om them are still maintained. This is even less fortunate since vesa provides no acceleration at all.
            With CPUs getting so fast, the lack of acceleration may be less of a problem than it was in the past.

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            • #7
              I've used this driver to keep old and otherwise no longer supported laptops with ancient graphics hardware out of the trash. MATE and marco will work just as well as GNOME 2 with metacity ever did with this. The VESA driver is the difference between a full desktop but without acceleration, and a text console or maybe even a black screen. This is one of those things that just plain has to work and does.

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              • #8
                I'm guessing Windows XP & 7 have an equivalent VESA driver, because they are able to render a desktop session on the screen at a low resolution prior to installation of the proper nvidia/amd/intel graphics drivers.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by cybertraveler View Post
                  I'm guessing Windows XP & 7 have an equivalent VESA driver, because they are able to render a desktop session on the screen at a low resolution prior to installation of the proper nvidia/amd/intel graphics drivers.
                  Windows has a compositor built right into the kernel. it can composite even the early boot, all it needs is a framebuffer to composite to.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Luke View Post
                    I've used this driver to keep old and otherwise no longer supported laptops with ancient graphics hardware out of the trash. MATE and marco will work just as well as GNOME 2 with metacity ever did with this. The VESA driver is the difference between a full desktop but without acceleration, and a text console or maybe even a black screen. This is one of those things that just plain has to work and does.
                    What's more you can even use dead hardware - GPU or chipset that crashes hard when its driver is loaded during boot, leading to gibberish or freeze or both. So with VESA or Windows fail-safe "VGA" you can rescue an entire laptop.

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