From: Marcus Sundberg <e94_msu@elixir.e.kth.se>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 23:55:06 +0200

Re: Changing the kernel makefile system...

> > Jon M. Taylor wrote:
> > > and that
> > > there could someday be hundreds of monitor drivers, and you have a real
> > > mess on your hands.
> > 
> > No, there will never be hundreds of monitor-drivers.
> > In the future there will be exactly ONE monitordriver.
> 
>         There will probably be one physical monitor.c file if that is 
> what you mean, but the monitor _definitions_ will by many.

Yes, but they should not accompany the kernel, see below.

> > Having different monitor drivers is just an ugly
> > kludge, which we should get rid of as soon as possible.
> 
>         How?  There are many old [S]VGA mnitors that do not support DCC,
> and even if they did, the video card also has to support DCC which not all
> do.  Unless you want to have the config system as people to type in 
> refreh rate limits from their monitor manuals....

If we try to get a system which require people to recompile the kernel
when they change their monitor into the kernel we're going to get
laughed at and noone will ever listen to us again.

Monitor parameters are not a thing to choose at compiletime!
They should be set by passing parameters to the kernel at
boottime, or by a user-level program with root-privs.
And they should default to only allowing the mode the kernel
booted in.

The monitor database will then come together with the
user-level program, which will be run at boot time.
Also included with this program will be a utility
with a nice (text-based) GUI to select your monitor,
which will then produce a config-file for the setting-
program. (The config-file will ofcourse be well-commented
ascii so you can change it by hand to.)

//Marcus