I'm busy building a new Debian 5.0 system (on new hardware), which will be a XEN host running multiple VM's for testing various solutions, as well as run inhouse server related stuff. Currently I use my existing system in text mode (yes, really!), but would love to have 2 screens on the new one. My idea is to use the primary screen in text mode, or something as close as possible to text mode, maybe framebuffer if it's fast enough. The secondary screen would then be used for graphics, eg. directfb related stuff like directvnc, or as another text screen (using con2fb) to monitor logs or something. It seems dual framebuffer is the only way to go and only a few select Matrox cards can do this? From my research it seems that mainstream GPU's like nVidia and ATI would only give me a dual framebuffer if I used 2 cards, so there's extra expense, and I'm unsure of the framebuffer support in the latest cards (my ThinkPad T61 with nVidia Quadro NVS140M doesn't seem to be supported by nvidiafb). The current circa 2000 Framebuffer HOWTO doesn't help either. Is there anything more recent that I can read? Note that I really have NO desire to run X (no konsole/xterm in maximized screen either), since it wastes too much resources in my opinion and I can work faster in text mode. Would the Matrox option give me a dual framebuffer that can do the above? Any other options? Anybody doing something similar?
thanks, -- pi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
