[Nouveau] Hardware wish list?

[Alex Henrie]

2015-05-20 17:00 GMT-06:00 Ilia Mirkin <imirkin at alum.mit.edu>:
> On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 4:24 PM, Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Greetings Nouveau developers,
>>
>> It's been a while since I've sent any hardware your way. I feel that
>> Nouveau is one of the most important pieces of software holding Linux
>> back,
>
> That's certainly a funny way of putting it. If that were true, I'd
> imagine that there would be tons of people looking to contribute to
> the project. But that doesn't seem to be the present reality.

My dream is to be able to plug a live Linux flash drive into any
desktop computer and play games without graphics artifacts, special
configuration, or bad performance. It is getting better, but I think
we have a long ways to go, especially since we're moving towards
Wayland and the proprietary Nvidia drivers don't work at all there.

> There are plenty of areas where nouveau is lacking... are there any in
> particular that you think need special attention? Note that things
> like "reclocking" are highly unlikely to happen without a considerable
> source of funds, as it would require a fairly long-term effort from a
> highly skilled developer. [And it's all moot once you get to Maxwell,
> since we're locked out of touching any of that stuff by signed code.
> With some luck NVIDIA will make firmware available for desktop GPUs,
> but I'm not holding my breath.]

Any improvement would move us closer to the above-stated dream.

>> and I'm happy to support you. If you send me a very specific
>> list of cards, boards, etc. that you want or need, I'll see what I can
>> do.
>
> Unfortunately the most precious resource is human time, not hardware.
> If you're hoping to contribute to nouveau's improvement (and aren't
> looking to do so directly by making code contributions), your time is
> probably best spent drumming up developer interest in contributing.

OK. I just thought I'd offer. I agree with you that human developer
time is a far more precious resource, but unfortunately I don't have
much to offer in the way of actual code. So I'll get out of your hair;
good luck!

-Alex