[ubuntu-uk] (K)ubuntu 6.10 Inspiron 1100 boot up screen not visible

[Neil Greenwood]

On 01/03/07, alan c <aeclist at candt.waitrose.com> wrote:
> Thanks, it shows some promise and the boot up image (kubuntu logo and
> graphic progress bar) although after the session has started it is
> apparent that the text is very poor. (is the 256 an indication of
> small graphic depth?)
> I searched further and found a number of kernel related vga numbers:
> from
> http://www.nimblex.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=28#o_vesa


The three numbers in the list represent, in order:
  - the horizontal resolution
  - the vertical resolution
  - the colour depth, i.e. the number of different colours that can be
displayed at each pixel.

You can also see colour depth expressed in terms of bits-per-pixel or
bytes-per-pixel, e.g. 256 is 8 bits-per-pixel since 2^8 (2 raised to
the eighth power)  = 256.

>
> vga=791    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
> vga=normal   DON'T USE FRAMEBUFFER | Standard console
> vga=790    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x32k
> vga=773    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
> vga=788    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x64k
> vga=787    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
> vga=771    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x256
> vga=785    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x64k
> vga=784    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x32k
> vga=769    -   VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x256
>
> I experimented long with these, and  saw that the x256 choices, (773,
> 771, 769)
> all gave visible boot up image and progress bar -  the 773 gave a nice
> central display.
> Unfortunately these all also led to very poor text/font display (in
> kde, kubuntu).
>
> The poor text display became apparently good and normal again if I
> restarted the xserver (ctrl alt backspace)

Unfortunately, I can't solve this problem. I do have one suggestion -
maybe you can tell X not to use the framebuffer, since the console is
now set to use the framebuffer.

> All of the other vga numbers did not give any boot up image etc,
> although subsequently the session showed normal text quality.
>
> Is there an elegant way of restarting the xserver at the start of  a
> session?

Not that I know of, and I don't know why this works...

> My conclusion thus far is that 6.10 does not give flexibility about
> boot up information - I would be very happy with a simple text list
> option(!) and  I wonder if I can influence the boot up resolution and
> then the normal session resolution, separately somehow (?)

I think someone else mentioned removing the "splash" option from Grub,
so try that.

I think your problems stem from the non-standard hardware that is used
in most laptops, which is not fully supported in Ubuntu (and probably
not in most Linux distros).


Hwyl,
Neil.