What is "nomodeset" SUPPOSED to do?

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 08:01 -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Jun 2010 04:18:08 -0700
> Mike Fedyk wrote:
> 
> > > The newest kernels have (God knows why) moved the video
> > > mode setting into the kernel (the only explanation I've
> > > ever seen for why this is a good idea is that the monitor
> > > goes "click" less often that way). So all the programming
> > > of the hardware specific clock rates and registers on the
> > > video card happen in the kernel during initial boot  
> > 
> > http://lwn.net/Articles/268378/
> > 
> > http://lwn.net/Articles/316274/
> 
> Actually, there is one really excellent side-effect of kernel
> mode setting: The ability to manually override the EDID info
> with a kernel boot parameter (figuring out how to use it might
> be a different problem :-). This will finally be a single point
> where you can lock down a monitor's video setting so the system
> will boot right even when the monitor isn't currently connected
> via the KVM switch or the monitor itself reports bogus EDID
> info.

Actually for me the significant "side-effect" (I'd rather call it a
consequence) is the promise of being able to avoid user lockout if for
some reason the X server freezes. Not sure we're there yet, but in
principle it's possible.

poc