Breezy installer resolution

[Carey O'Shea]

800x600 at 256 colours (vga=771) is SVGA. SVGA has been available since 
1989.

I dare say that 99.9% of computers that people will install Ubuntu on 
will be able to run SVGA without any problems. Given that there are more 
computers out there that are unable to display 640x480 with 16 colours 
than there are computers unable to display SVGA -- then shouldn't this 
be the default? There should be an option for those that can't run SVGA 
(instead of the other way around).

SVGA (800x600) is required for MS Windows XP which was released in 2001 
which means there were more older computers around at that time, so it 
is definitely well supported.

I read on google that Debian has now changed this for the next release 
(though I can't find the link again just now). All other Linux 
Distributions I've used have used SVGA (Mandriva, SUSE, Fedora, Gentoo, 
CentOS, Slackware, Knoppix, etc).

Anyone who can't run SVGA won't be able to run Ubuntu.

Thoughts?


Matt Zimmerman wrote:

>On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 05:27:34PM +1000, Carey O'Shea wrote:
>  
>
>>I've just installed Breezy Colony 4, I'll be testing it out tomorrow.
>>
>>Just one thing though, I've always wondered why I experience display 
>>problems with the Debian installer (on both debian/hoary/breezy) on my 
>>laptop. The bottom of the screen is squashed and rolled up to the top. I 
>>need to always append vga=771 (which is 800x600 at 256 colours) or 
>>vga=769 (640x480, 256 colours) to get the installer to display properly.
>>
>>If the installer doesn't use 769 or 771 by default, then what does it 
>>use? I have a desktop PC that is 12 years old that can display 769 or 
>>771 resolutions, so shouldn't all more recent PCs also have no problems?
>>    
>>
>
>It uses 640x480 with 16 colors, the plainest and simplest VGA mode
>available, which works on the widest range of hardware.
>
>I've seen laptops which manage to get this wrong, but not desktops...
>
>  
>