LWN: Comments on "LPC: The future of Linux graphics"

LPC: The future of Linux graphics

oak — 2008-10-02T19:59:02+00:00

Oh, KGI brings back memories... I ran a KGI patched kernel for a while in
90's because working with the framebuffer was so much nicer with it (I
just needed to patch it to get "dead keys" working). KGI MGA driver was
superior to what was in kernel and KGI drivers were nicely modularized
unlike the default kernel gfx code at that time. I was really disappointed
that KGI didn't get in, I had gotten used to nice graphical text consoles
with earlier Atari & Amiga and at some uni machines and x86 Linux text
console was a step backwards.

(Or at least that's what I remember from it. :-))

LPC: The future of Linux graphics

klossner — 2008-10-02T19:30:32+00:00

This article covers the technical issues. Jesse's blog entry gives a good feel for the atmosphere at that meeting.

3.0

liamh — 2008-09-27T18:20:40+00:00

This seems like a change of sufficient magnitude to merit a major version number increment. "Linux 3.0" would be a good alert to everyone about the major changes and could develop in parallel with the 2.6 series for a while.

Corrections made

corbet — 2008-09-25T20:41:09+00:00

Sigh. Sorry for the screwups, things have been corrected now.

LPC: The future of Linux graphics

jsbarnes — 2008-09-25T20:33:40+00:00

IIRC it was me who suggested switching on every printk. :) Also my name is
spelled w/o an 'i': Jesse not Jessie, hope it's not too late to correct the
photo caption.

LPC: The future of Linux graphics

ortalo — 2008-09-25T15:56:45+00:00

Agreed. But well... late better than never?
Hopefully, one day, graphics hardware manufacturer will open up all their specs too.

PS: Wow, it was already 10 years ago that I wrote that CL-GD546x driver!! ;-)

LPC: The future of Linux graphics

deater — 2008-09-25T13:41:22+00:00

Well in that case, why won't they change their mind again? If we had started 10 years ago, maybe X11 would be ready by now. Instead we had 10 years of X11 being able to lock up the machine from userspace.

In any case, http://lwn.net/1998/0226/#kernel shows that the issues haven't really changed that much over the years.

LPC: The future of Linux graphics

dlang — 2008-09-25T06:17:49+00:00

given that the graphics folks have drasticly changed their mind about what the best solution is within the last year, I doubt if the 10 year old design would have worked well

LPC: The future of Linux graphics

elanthis — 2008-09-25T05:47:57+00:00

Hindsight is 20/20. :)

LPC: The future of Linux graphics

deater — 2008-09-25T04:39:48+00:00

So 10 years after the big flame-war, we're finally going to get a KGI-like layer? I wonder how much better things would have been if Linus had been more reasonable back then.