• 2 Posts
  • 42 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
cake
Cake day: May 5th, 2024

help-circle



  • Another part of it is the gpu bios. The gpu bios contains x86 opcodes that it expects the host system to run for gpu-specific functions like video mode switching and probably lots of other stuff. I know that Vesa bios extensions mode switching requires a pointer to the functions in the gpu bios which the cpu runs. I tried to make a platform independent Vesa driver one time and couldn’t figure out how to circumvent using the gpu bios for it since the functions you’re supposed to call are compiled for x86. Even the well-refined projects like Seabios still rely on the VBE pointers for non-legacy video modes.

    Legacy vga does also has a bios but it’s relatively not that difficult to circumvent using the bios on legacy vga cards, only issue is that legacy vga modes are mostly useless.

    I think there’s a newish way of doing this stuff that doesn’t involve Vesa or legacy vga but I don’t know what it is. This I’m sure is only one of the many problems that have to be overcome if someone wanted to hack a 1080ti onto a raspberry pi or something.













  • I’ve had a Debian server in my basement for 4 or 5 years. I’ve encountered a total of 2 entire issues the entire time I’ve had that running. One of which was actual bullshit that I’m still pissed about but the other issue I eventually fixed on my own. It has worked well enough that Debian deserves a go at being a daily driver next time I do an os reinstall.

    I really really wish I could come up with a command line script way to issue a command that makes the computer reconnect to the wifi without human intervention of any kind, without so much as even a single ui password dialog, but that’s not a distro specific thing. I use iwctl right now, it seems to be the most reliable and I’ve tried them all.



  • I’m installing Debian next time. Arch is OK but it breaks too often and keeping everything working in an Arch installation is a full time job. Void Linux is like Arch but more stable. Voids weakness is that some of the underlying libraries are different (something about multilib and glibc I think) and there are certain Linux programs that can never run in void and you can’t get them. Monodevelop and virtual box for example. I might have to switch to something else soon just because I need this stuff. (yes I know about qemu and bochs, yes I know about compiling basic c# programs via the command line, and all of that is unsuitable for my use case). Void seems to be a great choice as long as you don’t need to use Monodevelop or virtualbox though. It’s great at gaming once you switch to x11.

    There’s a good chance Debian will have a harder time playing steam games due to older mesa drivers or something but it might be a necessary tradeoff.

    Edit: also, WTF is the font situation in Void Linux? Half my webpages are have some shitty font front the 90s instead of whatever the normal font is and most of my pdfs look weird and can’t be printed because of it. I have just about every single thing in Void repository with the word “font” installed yet I still have to get out my Ubuntu laptop every time I want to print a pdf.