Packard on the state of Linux graphics

Keith Packard has posted an extensive summary of the state of the art in Linux graphics support and where things are going in the future. "In moving towards our eventual goal of a KMS/GEM/DRI2 world, we’ve felt obligated to avoid removing options until that goal worked best for as many people as possible. So, instead of forcing people to switch to brand new code that hasn’t been entirely stable or fast, we’ve tried to make sure that each release of the driver has at least continued to work with the older options. However, some of the changes we’ve made have caused performance regressions in these older options, which doesn’t exactly make people happy — the old code runs slow, and the new code isn’t quite ready for prime time in all situations. One option here would be to stop shipping code and sit around working on the ‘perfect’ driver, to be released soon after the heat-death of the universe."

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