Current support and roadmap for discrete graphics card hot switching

[William Tracy]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Albert Vilella <avilella at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think a user logout->login, which at least in Ubuntu corresponds to a gdm
> restart nowadays, is a much
> leaner option than a cold reboot of the system. You only lose the opened
> windows,
> but all services like connection to internet, etc, are kept alive, so it's
> better than a reboot.

Just thinking out loud here: If desktop session management were good
enough, even open windows could be "persisted".

Even better would be if there were a mechanism to transparently
disconnect an app from one X session, wait for X to restart, and then
attach it to the new session. Probably doable at the toolkit level,
but that doesn't help with all the zillions of apps written against
legacy toolkits.

Random idea: There are already several special-purpose X servers that
run on top of Xorg supporting special magic like hardware compositing.
What if there were a server that could dynamically dispatch to/from
different Xorg instances? It would notice when Xorg dies, and stop
sending it events. When a new Xorg launches, it would send a series of
"new window" commands, and attach all of its clients to those windows.

Right now I'm assuming that both cards would support equivalent
resolutions and color depths. If not, then never mind. :-P

Anyway, I agree that restarting the server is less painful than a full reboot.

-- 
William Tracy
afishionado at gmail.com -- wtracy at calpoly.edu
Vice President, Cal Poly Linux Users' Group
http://www.cplug.org

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your
right to say it."
    -- Evelyn Beatrice Hall, frequently mis-attributed to Voltaire