Xfbdev speedup with video=vesafb:mtrr:3

[PDP-8]

So I sped up my recent TC64 install which uses Xfbdev by default.  (You have to since 64 bit won't work with xvesa).  I appended the following boot parameter to get my speedup:

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video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr:3
I got the tip from a much earlier forum posting:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,17780.msg107029.html#msg107029

I *think* I'm still using Xfbdev, as you cannot use the Xvesa utility is grayed-out to change your resolution.  (I do that via the boot paramater with my own vga=xxx option if I feel the need to change it)

Works great, but am confused a little bit - am I using xvesa or xfbdev now?

[coreplayer2]

Why not use Xorg ?

[PDP-8]

That's a great question about not using a full Xorg, and is basically a matter of preference - my major attraction to TC is to make the most out of minimalism for what I do.  I learn so much from it, yet I'm not trying to be small for the sake of it. 

What I found is that once I start going the full Xorg route, I basically end up duplicating a "distro" just bolting on add-ons until I'm bloated and tend not to learn anything other than distro building.

Although I *do* like a little bit of splash, say fltk-full and TTF fonts, and applications like Dillo or RXVT compiled to take advantage of them.

Not that there's anything wrong with duplicating a distro, TC is beautiful because the op can take it anywhere they like and of course the whole filesystem ethos of TC is cool.  Goldilocks and just the right porridge for me.

A recent example is that for decades I used BC as my quickie desk calculator that comes with nearly every distro.  But that is not in the busybox applet set but DC is!

Sooo...  instead of installing BC, I learned DC (rpn cli calc) a bit and am totally happy with it.  Whaddy'a know - an "app" from 1969/70 just prior to Unix (Thanks Bob Morris and Lorinda Cherry!) rocks.

Sorry for the long rant - it's just that when I go Xorg, the temptation to add yet another application is never ending.

[coreplayer2]

...
What I found is that once I start going the full Xorg route, I basically end up duplicating a "distro" just bolting on add-ons until I'm bloated and tend not to learn anything other than distro building.

I likely expect more performance and usability out of my hardware.  And to that end I build my PC's with exactly what I need to be productive, competitive and it be useful.    Today with the abundance of power available there is no reason why we can't have our cake look appealing, right?   Thing is we built as we like it..

I recently bought a cheap notebook, it has more processor and Video power than any of my current gaming rigs and came with 12GB of RAM (yeah a cheap notebook) which is more memory that the USB I often boot TC from!!

Sorry for the long rant - it's just that when I go Xorg, the temptation to add yet another application is never ending.

I think we only install what we need and we load "onboot" only what we use on a daily basis..
 

[curaga]

There's a built-in calculator script, calc, that uses awk. It's a more traditional syntax.

calc "5 * 6 / 5.5"

edit: and you're still using Xfbdev. vesafb is a kernel component.

[PDP-8]

Awesome calc!  I need to look into /usr/bin more often.  Browsing all the human-readable executables which brings TC to life is pretty inspiring.  Makes me appreciate it that much more.

Thanks for the tip about vesafb being a kernel component!  I'm going to check it out more.

And if in doubt what one is running just:

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cat /etc/sysconfig/Xserver
to find out.

I'd seen that video=vesafb boot parameter for years on other projects, but I always made a disconnect between Xvesa and the vesa spec itself.  Thanks for the pointer!

[PDP-8]

Aha - running TC64 on some different machines and saw that TC's grub bootloader has this option as a default, but on another machine booting with extlinux it doesn't.

Ok, we can deal with that...

[coreplayer2]

I have to say that for the first time ever, i'm using Xfbdev without any negative window performance issues at all when dragging windows around the desktop.    I've no idea why this is actually because I do not use (AFAIK) this boot code

Code: [Select]

video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr:3
I only noticed this when I was unable to load Xorg in corepure64 until I build the Nvidia driver

[Juanito]

Are you using (u)efi boot? The efifb speeds things up a lot with Xfbdev (and in my case allows the use of the 1366x768 native resolution).

If I use legacy bios boot Xfbdev is almost unusable.

[PDP-8]

Yep - running UEFI on my Intel NUC.  To an HP monitor with 1920x1080 native.

Boots to Grub for my choices, and it is painfully slow to edit the bootline.  And it seems to ignore any additions when I append something like vga=ask (right after the video=vesafb option) and hit F10 to boot.

Virtual terminal characters reaaally tiny, and of course the fltk/flwm control panel etc is super dinky.  I can compensate somewhat by dragging the wbar icon size to comicly large values, but it seems like I'm locked into the native res no matter what I do.

Dragging aterm's around is totally jaggy - even with the vesafb:ywrap,mtrr:3 already baked into the grub bootline for me.  Same results an older 64 bit laptop too.

Appreciate what y'all have been doing to move TC forward and keep it fresh.  I'll see if something in my wizzbang NUC bios is hurting me somewhere...

[PDP-8]

I likely expect more performance and usability out of my hardware.  And to that end I build my PC's with exactly what I need to be productive, competitive and it be useful.    Today with the abundance of power available there is no reason why we can't have our cake look appealing, right?   Thing is we built as we like it..

I think the future is sadly dragging me who was actually very happy with a couple of xterms, twm, and xclock into a desktop environment rather than a simple window manager and a few well placed configuration edits.

I really enjoyed it, but maybe it's time for me to move into automated DE's. <sniff>

[coreplayer2]

I prefer function over form.  I find Hackedbox all the function I need 

[PDP-8]

You're absolutely right.  And what was I thinking - I have a tookit, not a distro in front of me.  Microcore, X, and TWM.  Sounds like I found my next project.

[PDP-8]

Fixed my problem --  Thanks Juanito for the uefi tip..

Put both my boxes I run TC64 on into UEFI only mode.  Now it acts Xfbdev is actually usable.

Window resizing is fast, although full-screen on my slow boxes (< 1.5ghz) with ctrl-alt-m isn't lightning fast, it is still usable for my use-case.  That, and a little iconizing - moving - and de-iconizing gets me where I need to go, whereas before it was near pointless.

Forcing uefi was the trick to making Xfbdev act a little snappier.  Kind of ironic.