Re: LiveCD bootloader

[Brendan Trotter]

Hi,

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 2:39 PM, Brendan Trotter <address@hidden> wrote:
> GRUB and Linux use "video mode numbers" to request a video mode. These
> video mode numbers can be different for different video cards. Early
> versions of VBE did define some standard mode numbers, but these
> became obsolete in VBE version 2.0 (back in 1994). Software written
> after 1994 shouldn't rely on these obsolete video mode numbers. For
> example, if you're lucky mode 0x118 might be 1024*768 with 24-BPP, but
> nothing guarantees that anymore, and it could easily be any other
> video mode. There's also no guarantee that the the video card supports
> the video mode (e.g. a lot of video cards only support 32-BPP video
> modes and don't support any 24-BPP video modes; and some only support
> 24-BPP video modes and not 32-BPP video modes; and the same is true
> for 15-BPP vs. 16-BPP).

My apologies.

It seems GRUB2 has improved a lot, and doesn't rely on the obsolete
"standard video mode numbers" anymore. Except for problems caused by
video modes that are supported by the video card but not supported by
the monitor; it's mostly only a problem with Linux itself now.


Cheers,

Brendan