On 4/19/05, Richard Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Mark Knecht wrote: > > >Hi, > > What are they? What do they help? How much? > > > > How is this related to the USE flag directfb? > > > > I'm building a machine that isintended to record a lot of video > >using MythTV. The video probably won't be viewed directly on this > >machine but if it is I'd like the performance to be good. > > > > Is this somthing that would help significantly? > > > > > > Probably not. Generally, framebuffers are used for graphics > consoles...console in the sense of those first 6 ttys that normally do > nothing but display "login:". Packages like bootsplash depend on > framebuffer graphics, and some GUI applications can also use > framebuffers directly, instead of X, which is mostly useful on embedded > or kiosk systems where memory can be very tight, and X can be overkill. > > Some X drivers can use a merged framebuffer with the kernel, which I > _think_ saves you a bit of memory and not much else. At least, I get no > noticable performance difference with the 'radeon' driver whether I set > the UseFBDev option or not. The only benefit to UseFBDev I have found > is that it stops VMWare from complaining when I try to make a > low-resolution virtual machine appear full screen. > > For video playback, I think your best bet is to just stay in X. > > -Richard > --
Thanks Richard. So reading between the lines, frame buffers are ways of doing graphics when I'm not in X? Sort of like older DOS type graphics programs. It's talking to the hardware VGA and writing directly into the card's memory? Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
