RE: Is framebufer driver a replacement for video driver?

Hi Adaplas,

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I have a small query. I may be silly, but please help by make it

clear.

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Framebuffer definition :-

The frame buffer device provides an abstraction for the graphics
hardware. It represents the frame buffer of some video hardware and
allows application software to access the graphics hardware through

a

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well-defined interface, so the software doesn't need to know

anything

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about the low-level (hardware register) stuff.

Does a framebuffer driver directly interact with the hardware

registers

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of the video card?

Yes.

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					or

Is there a generic low level driver that will interact with the
hardware?

Yes and No. Yes, because there are platform drivers that may work with
many cards (VESA, VGA16, OF).  You can consider them as generic.

Are you talking about the vesafb driver? this being  a generic driver,
Will this driver work on any video card? 
If a card is VESA 2.0 complaint, is there a generic framebuffer driver
that will work on it? 

I assume VESA 2.0 standards will define hardware registers.

However, the hardware specific specific driver will work only with a
particular chipset.

What chages from framebuffer driver to framebuffer driver?
I think its just hardware accessing.

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What happens when I say startx at command prompt with XF86Config-4

file

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configured for framebuffer driver?

Is it like, When I say startx with XF86Config-4 file configured for
framebuffer driver, the video we get is a result of X server using

the

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framebuffer driver directly? Right?

Yes.

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In this case, Is there a video driver involved in getting the video
apart from the framebuffer driver?

The framebuffer driver itself touches the hardware, and usually it's

one

driver per chipset.  However, the interface that is used by the
application
is standard.

Let's make this clearer.
The video I get after startx is running just on framebuffer driver?
There is no other video driver involved in the running video.right?


Thanks for ur response.

Regards,
Mukund jampala



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