Reply To: How to use antiX on computers with a motherboard with SIS or VIA chipset

Anonymous wrote:

you said that uses the sis MODULE from jessie

Yes. Though it really is a module (module sisimedia), xorg calls it “display driver” (that is why I called it driver).
It was packaged in antiX 15-16 and can be found in the antiX repos.

Anonymous wrote:

so you said that the ABI is working ?

I don’t know what ABI means, so I cannot say.

Anonymous wrote:

the only change is the kernel and the sis module?

Yes (more or less). I am not a real maintainer, and am only building it by what others tell me.
I have also included the updates for all packages (be it Debian or antiX), and included a similar list of applications included in antiX 19.4 full. And I have also built a 64 bits ISO.
I forgot to include the xserver-xorg-video-geode package to the i386 ISO to support the geode graphic chips that you mentioned before, mckaygerhard. Sorry. I had it written down but forgot when preparing the final ISO. I have included it in the instructions for the next release. If possible, could you recommend other xorg drivers that I could include in future releases? I don’t really have any machine to test, and I was only building the ISO based on marcelocripe and a few others’ input.

I was asked by marcelocripe to upload a new ISO for x64 so I also re-did the i386 ISO without adding anything else. Again, sorry.

MANUALLY SELECT THE XORG DRIVER
There are two ways to select the xorg driver if it doesn’t select itself automatically:

1) At boot, using the boot parameter xorg=.
Example:
xorg=sisimedia
for SIS graphic chipsets

xorg=openchrome
for VIA graphic chipsets.
Alternatively, for loading generic drivers, you can also use:
xorg=safe

Sometimes, an initdr module needed for the kernel to detect some hardware is not automatically loaded. If you know the corresponding module name, use the boot parameter:
load=<list>
If you don’t know the specific module needed, you could try loading ALL initdr modules (not the best recommendation, but useful for troubleshooting):
load=all
Normally you don’t need to worry about this.

2) In a persistence live device or in an installed system, manually create a xorg.conf file with the correct configuration.
2A) Create a generic xorg.conf file using the command
sudo make-xorg-conf <module> -o /etc/X11/xorg.conf
where <module> is the name of the xorg video driver. Example for openchrome (VIA driver):
sudo make-xorg-conf openchrome -o /etc/X11/xorg.conf

2B) Or create it manually (the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf) based on one you found on the internet or one that already worked for the testing machine (on a different distro or same distro but different version). Example for sisimedia:

#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# xorg.conf file
#
# Generated by make-xorg-conf sometime around Thu Mar 26 08:53:16 GMT 2015
#
# If you want to save customizations, delete the line above or this
# file will get automatically deleted on the next live boot.
#----------------------------------------------------------------------

Section"Monitor"
    Identifier"Monitor0"
    Option"DPMS""true"
EndSection

Section"Device"
    Identifier"Device0"
    Driver    "sisimedia"
EndSection

Section"Screen"
    Identifier"Screen0"
    Monitor"Monitor0"
    Device "Device0"
    SubSection"Display"
        Modes "1280x1024""1333x768""1024x768""800x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Taken from a post by SamK.

Or a more recent one by linuxdaddy (in this thread) for vesa generic video driver:

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# xorg.conf file
#
# A vesa xorg.conf file for old video cards to get full resolution
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor0"
    Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver     "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen0"
    DefaultDepth   24
    Monitor     "Monitor0"
    Device      "Device0"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
	Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
	Option		"Composite"	"Enable"
EndSection

If on live-USB, save persistence changes.
Reboot to see if the xorg driver loads properly. If it doesn’t, remove the xorg.conf file from terminal if needed and reboot.
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

As stated previously (close to beginning of this topic), the legacy ISOs are built using the build-iso technology created by the antiX team. I used the most recent version for antiX-19 available in gitlab, added the necessary changes (iso folder and initrd folder), added some extra files to Template/COMMON/ (mainly the debian-jessie.list source list and the slim.conf file for auto-login, and some other small things), edited the package.list files in various of the Template folders, including one to add and remove packages for jessie repos, and added minor changes in the build-iso code. I tried to keep things as close as the original build-iso configuration, so that it can still be a used as a tool to build general antiX based ISOs and not only the legacy ISO.

For anyone interested in building their own system, I am uploading to gitlab the entire build-iso folder with all necessary things for directly building a working bootable ISO without having to do much at all. It is already configured for the pseudo-antix-legacy ISO build, so you can see what I have done and change whatever you think needs changing (for example, remove or add packages you are interested in).
You will need a good internet connection and at least 8 GBs of free space.

The distro information can be found in Input/defaults-local, where the project name, kernel, live username, local mirror (for downloading the packages to create the ISO), etc. can be configured.
The build-iso script is the one that needs to be run to produce the ISO. Here you can see the small changes I have included in the script to install and hold the xorg jessie packages.
Files in Template are the ones used to configure packages to be installed, in COMMON you can see files to be added or changed, sources, etc. The jessie sources can be found in Template/COMMON/squashfs/etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-jessie.list
Packages to be installed from jessie repos can be found in Template/base-AND-full/jessie.list (if building for 64 bits, replace contents with jessie.list.64, as the geode package is not available for x64 architecture and will make the build iso to fail).

I understand, @mckaygerhard, that you are already busy maintains a venenux, so any advise, as small as it may be, will help a lot. I want to keep the antiX desktop (though some apps may be going away if not needed/don’t work on older machines), and was aiming at improving hardware detection and support for older devices.