[Xorg] The big multiconsole nasty

[Alan Coopersmith]

Adam Jackson wrote:
> What about them?  I was unaware that _any_ Unix vendor's X server used the 
> MetroLink loader, so it's not like we can use modules from Xsun with 
> xorg-solaris.  If this assumption is false I'd be very interested to know.

There is a bridge module we've made for Xsun to allow it to load modules using
the MetroLink loader, so that it can use XFree86/Xorg drivers, but it requires
recompiling the driver to work (Xsun & XFree86 structure layouts are not
compatible for some of the core X server structures), and is one way - you can't
load an Xsun module with it.  (The native Xsun module loader is simply dlopen(),
but since Xsun & Xorg have different API's, you'ld have to provide some way to
deal with those calls in Xorg in order to be able to use an Xsun module, and I'm
not sure it's worth the effort to do all that.)

> Which is fine, for the old decrepit platforms.  But the MetroLink loader 
> causes real problems for modern systems.

That definitely matches our experiences here.

>>However I would very much like to hear the opinions of those who use
>>other OSes as they may be deprived of the possibility of loading binary
>>only device drivers in the future.

How many of those binary-only device drivers are truly platform-independent
and don't require special kernel modules or other platform-dependent bits?
(I admit, I've only tried the Nvidia binary driver - I don't know about any
  others that may exist.)
-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering