SEUL: Stopping dreams

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

I have seen some propositions who seem to be going too far or be
irrealistic.

1) Editors: The goal is to provide the user an editor for common tasks
like sending mail and news or fiwing some problems in config files.
These tasks don't require a powerful editor.  They don't need much
more than an editor being capable of search and replace.  Criteria are
online help and intuitiveness.  In addition it would be nice if it had
an X and a console mode.

Editors like NEDIT are _not_ what we are looking for.  NEDIT is a
programmer's editor with many features who won't be used by an end
user but whose sheer existence will confuse our users.  In addition
NEDIT works only under X: ie cannot be used in emergencies.

2) Using BIOS under Linux: BIOS works in 16 bit real mode and LInux in
32 bit protected mode.  The x86 CPUs use the same op codes in 16 bit
mode and in 32 bits mode but in one case it uses 16 bit addresses and
in the other 32 bits.  That means than the same binary seuqnce will
not produce the same results in 16 and in 32 bits mode.  About
protected against real mode in real mode the base address is the
contents of sement register multiplied by 16, in protected mode the
segment register contains an index to one of of the segement
descriptor tables.  Again the same binary sequnce will not give the
same results if invoked in real or protected mode so the BIOS designed
to be invoked in real mode will not work in the protected mode of
Linux.

If it can be done from Linux it must be in VM86 mode (that is how
DOSEMU work).  The DOSEMU people have experience with it but if you
want to influence them so thay write a detection program the best is
having something to show, for now we only have vaporware.  In addition
there is no magic in the BIOS: the driver probes the address used by
the peripheral is supposed to manage.  The driver came with the
equipment so the DOS user can assume than if he has a Millenium,
Matrox shipped the right driver and a Mystique driver.

3) About an all XDM Linux: This would be nice however don't forget to
look if that is possible in 1998.  I don't doubt there were people
dreaming about croosing the Atlantic by plane in 1912 but that
exceeded the capabilities of 1912's planes.

For now: XDM does not detect loops of death (easy to fix), but worse X
does not detect if the monitor is displaying garbage or even if it is
frying.  X does not support detection and automatic configuring of
Plug and Play Monitors.  XDM does not allow changing color depths
(some clients don't work in cerain colour depths).  In addition we are
not even sure the card is supported in better than VGA mode nad even
this is not sure (NVIDIA based cards don't work with the VGA 16
server).

So for now it is not possible to drop the user into X without having
given him the opportunity to verify it works.  In additikon X and XDM
don't support concepts like if immediately killed than next time start
in failsafe mode.  The best we can do is: in case of unclean shutdown
(like when the user hits reset due to garbled display) ask about
restarting in conservative mode (640x480 low refresh rate) assuming
PCI scanning reports than it is a supported card and than the server
is present.

I feel than it is still too soon to make XDM the default mode out of
the box.  The more we can do with available software is insure the
user knows how to start X manually and when convinced than it works
provide him with a push-button tool for making XDM mode the default or
reverting to console mode as default.


4) About grandiose development projects:

I will recall to list members than the goal of a distribution is
allowing the user to install and configure plus providing him with the
software he needs.  Have a working a distribution working and then you
will be able to ask XFree or Dosemu people to implement things you
need, in addition you will get user contributions.

Trying to implement now the features of SEUL 2 or SEUL 3 is a sort
path for never having SEUL 1.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

"For drinking muddy water if that is the water of truth,
            for that the camel is needed"