Stupid Linux Tricks

[David Bandel]

On 5/8/06, Mike Reinehr <cmr at amsent.com> wrote:
> On Monday 08 May 2006 10:45 am, Chong Yu Meng wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Not sure how useful this "trick" is to people on this list, and probably
> > some people on this list already know this trick, but it took me a long
> > time before I found out about it:
[snip]
> IIRC the earlier kernels needed the vga parameter to be in hex, e.g.
> vga=0x305, but newer ones will accept decimal as well as hex, e.g. vga=731.
>
> You not only need to determine a mode supported by your monitor, but one
> supported by your video card as well. While experimenting, it's fun to have
> your system boot into a console mode not supported by your video card and
> then try to do a normal shutdown "in the dark!"
>

Well, if you'd read my now ancient book Using Linux 6th Edition, I
believe you'd have found this.  I _always_ try to boot with vga=791 or
794 (depending on monitor size) first.  I can't stand 6 story tall
letters on a 19"+ screen.  In fact, all Dell laptops look better this
way.  And in lilo.conf it's on a line of its own, either in global
config section or per stanza.  There are some server graphics cards
that unfortunately do not support framebuffer, but that shows up fast.

Now if you have an SMP machine, you'll get one tux per P.  In fact, if
you have hyperthreading, you'll see two per processor as long as
hyperthreading is enabled.

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
--
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto