[OLPC-SF] Configuring the XO for the Framebuffer console

[John Magolske]

I finally posted my notes on setting up the XO to work in text-mode.
Apologies for being so late with getting this out... I was planning to
refine it into a more proper HowTo, but other priorities came along
and... well, I figured something rough is better than nothing at all:

http://B79.net/code/xo_textmode.txt

Some additional related scripts I've written are here:

http://B79.net/code/

If anyone has questions, feel free to email me -- onlist or offlist
as you feel is appropriate.

Regards,

John



* John Magolske <b79net at gmail.com> [080326 22:16]:
> 
> I boot my XO straight into the Linux framebuffer console (changed a
> setting in /etc/inittab so Xwindows doesn't even start up) and run a
> screen session. GNU screen could be considered a sort of text mode
> "window manager", it can multiplex multiple terminals in one Linux tty
> or one Xterm. Each screen terminal can then run a different text-mode
> application like elinks (web browser), irssi (IRC client), mutt (email
> client) or vim (text editor).
>
> I've found running screen in the framebuffer console is the fastest,
> least memory-intensive set-up. Not without its limitations -- but
> surprisingly capable with some tweaking. You can listen to music, view
> images and even movies without starting up X.
>
> But to run Firefox does require X and some sort of graphical window
> manager. For that I use Fluxbox, which is very lightweight. IceWM is
> another lightweight window manager (roughly equivalent to Fluxbox in
> my experience), but these days I'm leaning towards Fluxbox. I left
> Sugar installed, so when booting up X I can choose between Fluxbox or
> Sugar.
>
> At the moment my notes are a bit scattered, but by the end of the week
> I hope to pull together and post a HowTo describing how I set up the
> framebuffer-console/screen and X/Fluxbox configurations. There were
> lots of little details to sort out along the way...
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>


-- 
John Magolske
http://B79.net/contact