Entry

Does linux have a color palette which is different than the standard 216?

Dec 1st, 2004 08:46
Nat Tuck, mike gifford,

Running any reasonable version of Linux with any even vaguely modern PC
hardware you're going to end up with 16 or 24 bit color, which means
you're talking thousands+ of colors which include the "Netscape Web 216
colors".
If you are actually on a system that uses 8 bit colors (which is where
your question gets interesting), X uses a dynamic color palette. What
that usually means is that it supports whatever the first 255 (at most)
colors that applications request, and that it may be able to change
which 255 colors it's using at a given time. In 8 bit console
framebuffer mode, I don't know if it uses a dynamic or static palette,
but if you need to know that you probably can find the information in
the kernel fb docs/source.
In conclusion "X should be using 16 bit or 32 bit color and not a color
palette unless you have weird/old/unsupported hardware or are trying to
do weird stuff - therefore it should easily support any given colors
that you might want".