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Re: [Xen-devel] [RFC] Xen Virtual Framebuffer

To: Anthony Liguori <aliguori@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [RFC] Xen Virtual Framebuffer
From: Gerd Knorr <kraxel@xxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 11:50:53 +0100
Cc: xen-devel <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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I threw together a proof-of-concept over the weekend of a simple virtual framebuffer/keyboard/mouse. The basic design is have a vmalloc()'d buffer in the guest exposed as /dev/fb0 and mmap()'d in dom0. There's also a simple message system for keyboard/mouse events.

Cool.

Some interesting topics in this area are acceleration, whether we should implement our own X driver (or just enhance the fbdev driver since it uses no acceleration right now), and how to properly expose it over something like VNC.

Hmm, I don't think acceleration is that important here. 2D acceleration likely disappeares in graphics hardware soon. I'd say a simple, stupid framebuffer for installs is perfectly fine, for accelerated graphics its probably more useful to skip 2D altogether and look at OpenGL virtualization instead.

just my 2 cent,

  Gerd

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