Re: Current discussion about the future of free software graphics

["Michel Dänzer" <michel@daenzer.net>]

On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 05:30, Jon Smirl wrote:
> If everyone will please read Benh's original post describing this... Ben and I
> had been emailing on this topic before he wrote this.
> 
> --- Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> wrote:
> > I agree with the idea of moving the EDID decoding & mode selection to
> > userland. In this regard, though, I beleive we should aim toward some
> > simple library that sits with the kernel, eventually distributed with
> > the kernel tree, to live in initramfs optionally since it may be
> > required to even get a console at boot (which is fine, initramfs is
> > available early). The video cards themselves have PCI drivers that can
> > "trigger" detection by the library via hotplug, the library could manage
> > things like persistent configuration, either separate desktops or
> > geometry of a complex desktop, etc... and eventually notification of
> > userland clients of mode changes.
> > 
> > One reason for that is lots of monitors lie about their capabilities in
> > their EDID block, so we want "override" files.
> > 
> > The kernel driver in this case doesn't need to be that much different
> > than the current fbdev's though, except that we want to move the HW
> > access for graphics commands to the kernel too, which basically turns
> > into merging the DRI driver and the fbdev. There is no need, I think, to
> > re-invent the wheel from scratch here, it would be a lot more realistic
> > to build on top of those existing pieces.
> 
> What this is saying is that very early in the boot process the graphics driver
> will be initialized. At this point it will generate a hotplug event. This event
> will be handled by an app and lib that live in initramfs.  This is not saying
> that mode-setting will be delayed until normal user space starts.

Sure, because Ben doesn't talk about moving mode-setting to userland at
all AFAICT. :)


> I've already built a very messy prototype by moving the existing fbdev 
> code to user space and it works just fine. 

Maybe if others could play with this prototype...


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer      |     Debian (powerpc), X and DRI developer
Libre software enthusiast    |   http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer



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