Working with the Linux framebuffer

The Linux kernel provides an abstraction for the graphical hardware in the form of framebuffer devices. These allow applications to access the graphics hardware through a well-defined API. The framebuffer is also used to provide a graphical console to the Linux kernel, so that it can, for example, display colors and a logo.

In this recipe, we will explore how applications can use the Linux framebuffer to display graphics and video.

Getting ready

Some applications, especially in embedded devices, are able to access the framebuffer by mapping the memory and accessing it directly. For example, the gstreamer framework is able to work directly over the framebuffer, as is the Qt graphical framework.

Qt is a cross-platform application framework written in C++ and developed both by Digia, under the Qt company name, and the open source Qt project community.

For Qt applications, Poky provides a qt4e-demo-image and the FSL community BSP provides a qte-in-use-image, both...