kdrive/tinyx/xvesa questions

Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: kdrive/tinyx/xvesa questions
started by: rtobyr

Posted by rtobyr on Aug. 10 2008,16:39

I got this old iMac with 128MB RAM off of Craigslist, and I'm still struggling to do anything with it. I've been all over these forums (and Google) trying to figure out where to get kdrive/tinyx/xvesa, which I still can't figure out if they're the same thing or three different things that work together. Please don't send me to Ubuntulite, because I have looked there too, I think they nixed the use of that X server, and they're Intel only. I have combed through the Debian packages (back to Debian 2.2 "Potato" circa 2000), but I can't find it/them there, either.

Current builds of xorg eat up 90MB of RAM, even with Openbox, which is the lightest WM that I could find (lighter than fluxbox). I can't build a system that wants less than 130MB just to show me an X desktop.

I am considering sending my $7 to Lizard Biscuit for the DSL sources, but I don't even know how they'll be organized. Has anyone done this? Do you get sources that are reasonably organized, documented, and easy to build?

Because of DSL, I *know* that I ought to be able to build a system that uses a maximum of 64MB (leaving me 64MB to run programs), and I am pretty sure that kdrive/tinyx/xvesa is the key. Any help is appreciated.

Posted by roberts on Aug. 10 2008,16:47

DSL uses Keith Packard's original Kdrive, which happens(ed) not be be GPL. It is MIT. So I doubt would get the source from Lizard Biscuit.

Perhaps it is possible to Google around to find Keith Packard's source.

From what I have been told, if the Mac is Vesa or Framebuffer, then you might possibly be able to build only the Xvesa or Xfbdev tiny X servers from Xorg.

Posted by curaga on Aug. 10 2008,17:14

KDrive/tinyX source is a part of XFree and more recently xorg-server, it doesn't come on it's own. (Edit: it first did, but the later versions got integrated)

Xvesa is one of the tinyX servers.