Kernel support for graphics cards

[Russell Shaw]

Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:
> 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. :)

If this open one gets going, we can abandon the proprietory crap;)

http://wiki.duskglow.com/index.php/tiki-index.php?page=Open-Graphics