Subject: [bug#58549] [PATCH draft] installer: welcome: Warn when uvesafb gets used.

From: "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 15:39:57 +0200

Please excuse my slow response.

Mathieu Othacehe <[email-masked]> writes:
>> +  (when (member "uvesafb" (modules-loaded))
>> +    (run-error-page (G_ "\
>> +This may be a false alarm, but possibly your graphics hardware does not
>> +work well with only free software.  Expect trouble.  If after installation,
>> +the system does not boot, perhaps you will need to add nomodeset to the
>> +kernel arguments and need to configure the uvesafb kernel module.")
>> +                    (G_ "Pre-install warning")))
>
> This seems like a good idea to me. Perhaps we could be a bit more
> specific about the "expected troubles". Is it a black screen after Linux
> boot on the installed system?

With my somewhat older AMD systems, that the system doesn’t boot
actually is a white lie.  When using Xorg, the display locks up to a
still image (not black but the previous unrelated boot messages), but
IIRC it boots fine otherwise and can be used blindly.  So in the common
case of AMD, it could be said that “the display locks up to a still
image”.  Maybe that is not true in general though.

With SiS graphics on my vintage Uniwill One laptop, this would be not
true.  On cold boots, the laptop goes to kind of an infinite suspend
state.  On reboots, GDM just doesn’t start, but the virtual console is
usable.

Thinking about it, the false alarms are not nice, but I don’t know if
Ludo’s proposed device check <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/58357#4> would
be reasonably doable and he actually wasn’t mentioning it in relation to
graphics.  I think this patch is right (after fixing the indentation).
Shall I push or make more changes?

Regards,
Florian