Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] [RFC] fbdev & power management

[Russell K. <rm...@ar...>]

James Simmons writes:
> Believe it not the functional allready exist in the tty layer to change
> a video mode for a specific tty. It just has never been implemented in
> linux. I have implemented it for my own kernel tree.
> ...
> The only thing is you can't change the depth using this approach. So what
> do we do? FB_ACTIVATE_NXTOPEN :-) This signals to fbdev to preserve the
> color depth for the console system. Once take_over_console is called it
> will reinitalize the color palette for us. As for setting all the VCs we
> have good old VT_RESIZE.

Ewww, that means that all possible video modes must be listed in a table
in the kernel?  I'd prefer to keep the current situation because it is
has the "policy" in user space, ie, the video programming information.

That seems like a great step backwards to me.  For instance, how do you
handle the case where you want to support:

	FBCon Text, 80x30 @ 50Hz
	FBCon Text, 80x30 @ 60Hz

We already fully support this on ARM machines since one of the applications
of ARM boxen are web-top devices, which are required to produce TV
compatible signals.

Note that I'm not talking about a specialised embedded driver here, but one
that is used for machines which will do 1280x1024 @ 75Hz down to standard
TV signals without modifications.  In fact, I'm using it at 1280x1024
right now. ;)

--
Russell King (rm...@ar...)                The developer of ARM Linux
             http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html