Kernel support for graphics cards

[Friedrich W. H. Kossebau]

Am Sonntag, 8. Januar 2006 12:42, schrieb Carsten Haitzler:
> On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:23:23 +1100 Bojan Smojver <bojan at rexursive.com> 
babbled:
> > 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...
>
> quick answer: no.  kernels are not going to have graphics drivers any time
> soon - if ever. :)

While this should rather be a :( IMHO.

There is a project, Kernel Graphics Interface, under way, though very slowly, 
at http://kgi-wip.sourceforge.net/

Regards
Friedrich
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