Hello,
Subject line refers to my weekend-long efforts to build a custom kernel
(first time for me) that incorporates all the hardware support I need
that standard 2.2.20-compact doesn't OOB. For me that means support for
my SCSI card (Initio 9100U) and especially for the ATI Rage Fury Pro
128 DVI card. Many HOWTOs and reboots later, I still have no console
SVGA support (PLEASE before you waste bandwidth replying with guesses
mentioning 'SVGATextMode' -- and you don't even run an ATI card -- go
read the FAQs yourself and save yourself some embarrassment) to run at
a higher resolution at boot-up.
Knowledgeable ATI users amongst this List readership if they are any,
might be able to do a kind deed if they'd share with me what they've
done to use the framebuffer device capabilities introduced around
kernel 2.2. The basic task as I now understand it is to edit
/etc/lilo.conf to include a line like the following:
append="video=aty128fb:1024x768"
in the 'image=' section.
My boot starts to look good and a little Penguin appears on the
screen's upperlefthand corner, some fast kernel boot msgs appear, then
screen corruption appears in the lower half of the screen and in a
fraction of a second (much too fast to read anything) the screen (a FPD
BTW) shuts off to protect itself or whatever.
People who care to reply, please assume I've read the basic
easily-findable documentation out there including the info at Digital
Hermit, the Framebuffer HOWTO, etc.
Did ATI support get much better in more recent kernels? Before I go
randomly desperately trying newer sources I'd like to have more
targeted knowledge. I downloaded the .deb package containing the source
for 2.2.20 because that corresponds to the initial kernel I
(re-installed / upgraded) with. Rather than some much newer source
package. I assumed from many general Linux documentation I read that I
could expect that the source for my installation kernel would be
already there, BTW (under /usr/src/linux) and that's just one example
of the many many descrepancies I've found bewteen the reality of my new
Debian installation and things stated in widely-circulated Linux
documentation. IMHO Linux and Debian esp. clearly has a huge problem
with innaccurate and out of date documentation. [Go ahead and flame me.
I realize that for some people their religion is GNU/Linux and little
matters like 'reason' and 'common-sense' don't enter into the picture
at all anymore. So the flames won't bother me any more than to
stimulate a slight sense of pity for such sadly deeply self-deluded
people.]
A recent kind respondant noted that to me in a previous thread that
'[with Debian] you get all this free help [on a List like this]'. Very
true, and noble of such persons to provide such generous (sometimes)
free help to others, but unfortunately the truth I am seeing after 18
months of trying to get a really usable Debian GNU-Linux system up and
running is that *every bit of that free help and more* is _required_
for Debian to begin to be even a remotely viable alternative to a
Redmond OS, whereas the 'inferior' OS's from Redmond may be an ugly
kludge from a predatory company, but at least they are simple enough
that they can be installed and running in only 2-3 hours by a
moderately capable user in most cases. With Debian one has to become
knowledgeable in so many areas that one becomes an OS developer
oneself, practically. From where I sit right now (on my Windows98
system) I see that Debian is more of a developer's lifetime side-hobby
than a viable alternative to Windows for an average desktop user. And I
am not sure I'll ever have the time.
Flame away.
Yours Truly,
Soren Andersen
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