On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 07:39:34AM +0100, Alexander Graf wrote:

On 03.11.2009, at 07:34, Avi Kivity wrote:

quoted

On 11/03/2009 08:27 AM, Alexander Graf wrote:

quoted

quoted

How does it work today?

You boot into a TERM=dumb line based emulation on 3270 (worst thing  
haunting people's nightmares ever), trying to get out of that mode  
as quickly as possible and off into SSH / VNC.

Despite the coolness factor, IMO a few minutes during install time do 
not justify a new hardware model and a new driver.

It's more than just coolness factor. There are use cases out there 
(www.susestudio.com) that don't want to rely on the guest exporting a VNC 
server to the outside just to access graphics. You also want to see boot 
messages, have a console login screen, be able to debug things without 
switching between virtio-console and vnc, etc. etc.

The hardware model isn't exactly new either. It's just the next logical 
step to a full PV machine using virtio. If the virtio-fb stuff turns out 
to be really fast and reliable, I could even imagine it being the default 
target for kvm on ppc as well, as we can't switch resolutions on the fly 
there atm.

not sure if i'm missing the point here, but couldn't it be hypothetically
extended to stuff 3d (or video & more 2d accel ?) commands too ? I can't
imagine the cirrus or stdvga driver be able to do that ever ;)

-- 
Vincent