Idea #4516: Include 32 bit depth for video

Written by adityakavoor the 13 Mar 08 at 18:32. Category: Look and Feel.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

Ubuntu has a 24bit color depth by default.

It would be great if it gets a 32 bit color video display which would render better graphics, better video playback and might also help game lovers to run games better on linux.

I always feel video playback is where window$ takes a upper hand over ubuntu... Please fix this.

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Attachments

Ubuntuforums.org thread #271008

Duplicates

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Comments

mahehellraiser wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 18:38

Yeah...agreed with him...it would be a better display with a 32bit colour depth...

Aomapes wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 18:46

I agree too...

ubby wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 18:59

I agree also!

Eldmannen wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 19:45

I guess you do not know what you are talking about.

When you refer to Linux, you actually mean Xorg or the X Window System.

It mentions 24-bit which is essentially the same as 32-bit.
Vista and Mac OS X uses 24-bit color depth (bits per pixel) too.

32-bit color is a misnomer.

"Truecolor" is 24-bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth#32-bit_color

madjr wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 20:19

@adityakavoor

eldmannen is right you are confused.

24bit = 32bit

maybe we should name 24bit to 32bit so all you guys feel better ?

madjr wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 20:22

maybe this thread tittle should be:

"please rename 24bit to 32bit"

we could name it "64bit" so that way we are superior to windows too....

nah J/K i know many are confused :p

bigdufstuff wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 20:26

What is called "32-bit color" on windows is really 24-bit color plus an 8-bit alpha channel. Since 24 + 8 = 32, Microsoft thought a bigger number looked better.

X already does 24 bit color and already has an alpha channel. So this already exists.

zooounds wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 20:49

24 equals 32 in this case.

spyyder wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 21:12

So why not call it 32 and remove confusion, seems simple enough

johno wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 21:17

24 and 32 bit have the same colour depth, but is the original poster referring to more subtle issues with implementation and framebuffer packing for allowing different acceleration modes?

BobPendleton wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 22:19

Johno,

Eldmannen is correct. I've been doing computer graphics for over 30 years and I spent 5 years porting the X server to various machines. There are very few true 24 bit pixel machines left in the world. Now days, 24 bit color means 24 bits of color, which is 8 bits of each of red, green, and blue, packed on 32 bit boundaries with the 4th byte used for the alpha channel.

Fact is that with modern video cards you can't really know anything about how the pixels are packed in words, all you can know is that there are 24 bits per pixel allocated to color.

This idea reflects the difference between telling the truth in a specification and lying in an advertisement. Anyone who makes the mistake of believing anything the read in an ad pretty much gets what they deserve.

travis wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 23:29

32bit is just 24bit color + 8bit alpha channel right? I'm pretty sure that Ubuntu can support the alpha channel so the option should be named 32bit.

To get to the original posters issue though (not their proposed solution), yes I agree video playback in Ubuntu isn't as good as it is in Windows, and I'd love to see that improved. +1

adityakavoor wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 02:37

Sorry, I was wrong. Thanks for all your comments.

jiu wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 03:26

24 2bits is well enough for me. That's a total of 16.7 million colors. I don't think anyone needs more than this actually, but maybe with ultra sensitive robotic eye transplants in a couple decades that will become a real problem :-)

nullmind wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 07:32

Unless you have a transparent monitor 32-bit color depth for a framebuffer would be rather useless. If you're running compiz or any other composite window manager it may do better alpha blending, but again 24-bit color has 8-bits per color channel wheras 32-bit has the same but 8-bits for an alpha channel. I don't know of any standard color depths that use more than 8-bits per channel in 32-bit mode.

Cheers,
Kris

reed wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 18:27

I'd just rename it (in the X config stuff) to "Millions of colors" like Apple does. Then users would know what the actual difference is.

dino wrote on the 24 Jun 08 at 10:15

"So why not call it 32 and remove confusion, seems simple enough"

because its wrong?

droetker (Moderator) wrote on the 24 Jun 08 at 10:30

Why rename it? it IS 24bit, even if Windows calls it 32bit.

We HAVE HTML Standards, even if Microsoft doesn't support them with IE.
There IS an ODF, but Microsoft wants to use it's own.

The List is endless.
I don't want to make Linux more Windowish.
It should be transparent.

droetker (Moderator) wrote on the 24 Jun 08 at 10:31

so this idea is either implemented or invalid.

glotz wrote on the 30 Jun 08 at 09:01

Marketing bullshit is powerful. This thread is a great evidence of that... perhaps Ubuntu should claim it's using 4000+ bit laser composition bit depth mode...

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