Why does performance suffer when using a bit depth of 8 with a virtual frame buffer X server?

If you use a virtual frame buffer X server, Xvfb, then we have found that performance on Linux and Solaris is much slower for a bit depth of 8 compared with bit depths of 1, 16, or 24.

We recommend launching Xvfb with one these bit depths. The following command, for example, launches Xvfb with a bit depth of 24.

/usr/X11R6/bin/Xvfb :1 -screen 0 800x600x24

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