How to bring up a window really quickly?

[Alan Cox]

On Mer, 2006-03-29 at 16:29 -0700, Tamas Kerecsen wrote:
>  6. Buying a video board that is able to do hardware overlays or can
> handle multiple screen buffers. My emergency app would flip the switch
> in the video card to display the appropriate overlay/screen buffer --
> are there any such beasts out there that don't break the bank? 

Its hard to find one that doesnt support overlay. The ugly but probably
quite effective hack then is to add hooks in X so you can get the video
memory address of the overlay buffer leave it always enabled and filled
the colour you select as "transparent" and just scribble something
useful into it from a high priority and maybe mlocked program