vga16fb and Ubuntu 10.04 Server

In Ubuntu 10.04 Server, the default framebuffer is vga16fb if no better
framebuffer is found. This is impossibly slow when using 10.04 as a virtual
machine in VirtualBox or as a guest in ESX 4. (See this bug report). In these situations, I recommend adding vga16fb to the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf:

# add this line
blacklist vga16fb

A reboot is required, and the result is that your 10.04 server will no longer
use a framebuffer.

History

vga16fb was removed from the blacklist-framebuffer.conf file on 2 Dec 2009:

“* Remove vga16fb from the framebuffer blacklist, we’ll want this to be loaded if there are no better framebuffers available.”

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/module-init-tools/3.11.1-1

According to this post in Ubuntu’s kernel-team list, vga16fb will be removed from Maverick. I’m not sure with what it will be replaced. The /etc/modprobe.d/ files are managed in the module-init-tools package, so keep an eye on the changelog to watch for developments.

As of module-init-tools 3.12-1ubuntu1, the Maverick package still has vga16fb out of the blacklist-framebuffer.conf file, so this fix is probably still valid.