[Openchrome-users] Getting ready to release OpenChrome Version 0.3.4

[Kevin Brace]

Hi Haldor,

> Hello
> 
> I just wanted to give the few remaining folks here a little cheer-up.  
> Thanks for still dealing with that hardware and trying to maintain /  
> hack on the driver! I am still using some chipsets (mainly CLE266 and  
> CN700) so I definitely appreciate it. I even remember the early days  
> when Openchrome wasn't even born and it was mainly Luc's code iirc  
> running on a CLE266.
> Sadly I am no developer, just user and can't contribute much besides  
> maybe an occasional bug report.
> 
> A release update would be quite nice. Probably not everybody is aware  
> or able to use of the possibilities of git code. (Back in the svn(?)  
> days I used that option from time to time.)
> But the tutorial is a good idea. It might be helpful, though, to put  
> it on the project page for everybody to see and thus to get more users  
> into testing "unreleased" code (if they dare :) ).
> 
> Any maybe, one day we even might see KMS for the VIA GPUs. ;)
> 
> Cheers and thanks for the work
> Haldor
> 
> 
> 

Thanks for the word of encouragement.
Yes, I am currently trying to make OpenChrome to be as automatic as possible when it comes to display detection.
Previously, OpenChrome relied too much on a large known device table to figure out what display resources the given hardware has, and it was becoming very difficult to maintain reliable allocation of display resources if this practice continued.
I finally removed this "known device table" entirely (it is completely gone from via_id.c), and due to code maintenance reason, I also removed "legacy" mode setting and VESA BIOS Extension (VBE) mode setting support.
This version will likely be called OpenChrome Version 0.4.0 due to the fact that it does not support these "legacy" features.
    However, several people have reported issues with DVI, and the work to fix DVI related code is taking much longer than I originally anticipated, so in the mean time, I will likely reverse some of these "legacy" option removal activities for now, and release OpenChrome Version 0.3.4 with DVI mostly not working.
The code to support VT1632A TMDS (DVI) transmitter based DVI port will be disabled for Version 0.3.4.
You can weigh in over here.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94130

After that, I will resume the legacy code removal, and call this version OpenChrome Version 0.4.0.
The fix for DVI will come around Version 0.4.1 or 0.4.2.
The current OpenChrome works fine with x.org X server 1.7 or later and Linux 2.6.32 or later (i.e., Ubuntu 10.04 and related OSes), but it does not work well with older Linux kernel probably due to a rumored DRM bug in the older Linux kernels.
I will continue to test the code against Ubuntu 10.04 for the foreseeable future.
    Regarding CLE266, the current code has a bug with ACPI S3 State resume, and I eventually plan to work on a fix for this bug, but it is somewhat of a low to medium priority item at this point (fixing DVI is the most urgent).
I do understand that people still use old computer hardware, and obviously CLE266 will continued to be supported.
I do have 2 mainboards with CLE266 (EPIA based), and I test it regularly with one of them (i.e., EPIA-M).
    In addition to the existing OpenChrome, Ran "Frank" Huang and I are in the process of reviving long forgotten (only one year though) DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) module for VIA Technologies IGPs originally written by James Simmons.
Yes, it is to support KMS, and I think spending some resources on this is probably necessary so that OpenChrome does not get dropped from Linux based OSes in the near future.
At least, Frank and I have observed that the new DRM module is working fine with VGA, but at least I have not tested it beyond VGA at this point.
Unfortunately, the way it is written currently, this developmental DRM module requires Linux kernel 3.18 or later due to it using the latest TTM API.

Regards,

Kevin Brace