UAE and Frame Buffer

[trekiej]

Hello.
I was wondering, is there is an advantage to using UAE on a Linux system using frame buffer instead of X11? (X-Amiga)

[gaula92]

Hello.
I was wondering, is there is an advantage to using UAE on a Linux system using frame buffer instead of X11? (X-Amiga)

X11 isn't well suited as a backend for emulators. Tearing, delays, high cpu usage on copy operations...
I wrote a KMS backend for SDL 1.2.x months ago and got decent results without X11 (smooth scrolls on NTSC freqs, no tearing by the means of a double-buffered display), but I'd use FS-UAE for now with it's OpenGL backend.

The future is SDL 2.0 wich has nice GL_ES support, no X11 scumm needed.

Back to the topic, the linux framebuffer device / driver (/dev/fbX) is deprecated. The KMS framebuffer is the way to go nowadays. And yes, it's way better than using crufty bloated X11 backend any day of the week.

[trekiej]

Thanks.

[FrodeSolheim]

With OpenGL, there wouldn't be any significant difference when running FS-UAE in X or on the framebuffer.

But if you are running FS-UAE through a compositor on X, that can indeed impact the performance and smoothness of the display, so either disabling compositing when running FS-UAE, or running FS-UAE in fullscreen (provided that the window manager unredirects FS-UAE when in full-screen) is a good idea.