Extending vesafb for modes switching ?

["Gaël Deest" <GUtopiste@free.fr>]

Ok, this may be a silly question. I am not a kernel/fbdev hacker, so I 
may ignore some relevant issues. But after many researches, I can't see 
why it would be impossible for the vesafb driver to handle modes switching.

According to my understanding of this stuff, vesafb mode setting is 
possible only during real mode, via a boot argument,  set by bios 
interrupts, which prevent from changing it later (if I said something 
wrong, please correct me.) But what about the xfree86 driver ? It seems 
to do its job via the VBE bios of the card. What would prevent vesafb 
from doing the same ? I know vesafb only supports VBE 2.0, not 3.0. I 
couldn't find the VBE 2.0 documentation, but in VBE 3.0 one, protected 
mode is supported.

I would see this as a great improvement, because of the really little 
number of cards actually supported by vesafb.

Regards,

Gaël D.


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