Kernel support for graphics cards

[Bojan Smojver]

I read Keith's excellent paper "The (Re)Architecture of the X Window
System" (http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/xarch_ols2004/xarch-ols2004-html/) and was encouraged by the direction that X is finally taking - the one of rapid and modern development.

I do have a few questions in relation to kernel support for graphics
cards though. Is hardware support for graphics cards in X going to be
marked deprecated in the near future (i.e. in favour of complete
Linux/*BSD/Solaris/<insert_flavour_here> kernel support)? If yes, will
it be accompanied by the dual release of X (i.e. one source tree with
deprecated hardware drivers, one with "hands-off" hardware), like we've
seen in the case of modularisation? And finally, is there a page on
freedesktop.org wiki that deals with the transition (specs for kernel
folks, status of kernel drivers, roadmap etc.)?

PS. What prompted me to ask this is the following sentence from the
paper: "All of these systems directly manipulate hardware registers
without any coordination among them." That really scares me - it almost
sounds like the mess that DOS used to be...

-- 
Bojan