I swear if Sun Microsystems was still around, their machines would still ship with 8-bit pseudocolor and you'd have to pay an extra $3k for 24-bit.

I got the extra vram in my LC to allow for 24-bit color but it was dog slow. The 16 bit data path didn't help. If I wanted it, I'd get things done in 8 bit or mono until it was ready, then switch to 24 bit for the final look.

Yeah, even in Linux we were doing these things with X Windows bit depths.

8 bit psuedo color, so the color palette switched with every focus-follows-mouse window boundary crossing. 16 bit direct color with banding but no more palette psychedlia.

This was equal parts to make it faster and to allow for higher framebuffer resolutions with limited VRAM.

16 bits? Luxury. I had 6 colors when I was a kid and was happy to have them.