Re: arch/i386/boot rewrite, and all the hard-coded video cards

Jan Engelhardt
2007-05-02T18:30:28Z

On May 1 2007 14:41, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>On Tue, 1 May 2007, Rene Herman wrote:
>>
>> The answer will probably be "no", but would this be a good point to ask if
>> this would be a good time to not bother with the mode switching code at all
>> anymore?
>
>The standard extended modes are actually really useful, if for a very
>simply reason: they give you bigger more lines on screen when a bug
>happens.
>
>So I _still_ occasionally use "vga=extended" just for that reason. The
>default 80x25 thing scrolls most oops away.
>[...]
>80x50 is useful for the above reason. Yeah, it's ugly, but it's useful for
>the "It's too much work to try to do anything but just take a digital
>photo of the screen". And that 50-line mode will actually be 43 in EGA
>mode, I think.
>
>The 132x50 mode is probably a bit prettier, and is fairly common too, and
>useful for the same reason.

Seconded. 80x50, and where platforms support it, *80x60 and 132x60*,
is kinda handy (despite the font getting smaller and smaller, heh),
esp. when you don't run it in VMware and not have some capturing
device (serial con/netconsole.. takes time to set up)

>And yes, I'm literally talking about the *text* modes. Not all of us want
>to have fbcon built in - I prefer my text-mode lean and mean and fast as
>hell, and if I want a frame buffer, I'll take X11, thank you very much.

You speak for me :)

Jan
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