Re: [PATCH] DRM / i915: Fix resume regression on MSI Wind U100 w/o KMS [LWN.net]

From:		Linus Torvalds <torvalds-AT-linux-foundation.org>
To:		Jerome Glisse <glisse-AT-freedesktop.org>
Subject:		Re: [PATCH] DRM / i915: Fix resume regression on MSI Wind U100 w/o KMS
Date:		Sat, 9 Jan 2010 10:17:19 -0800 (PST)
Cc:		Dave Airlie <airlied-AT-linux.ie>, LKML <linux-kernel-AT-vger.kernel.org>, Jesse Barnes <jbarnes-AT-virtuousgeek.org>, pm list <linux-pm-AT-lists.linux-foundation.org>, dri-devel-AT-lists.sourceforge.net

On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Jerome Glisse wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 06:50:41PM -0800, Jesse Barnes wrote:
> > 
> > Linus, can we ever drop those old paths?  Maybe after the new bits have
> > been around for awhile?  Users of really old userspace stacks would
> > lose 3D support, but they'd still have 2D, so it wouldn't be a complete
> > break.  The non-KMS paths sometimes break like this anyway without us
> > noticing (especially some of the weirder 3D paths)...
> > 
> > Just thinking out loud, we could really kill a lot of really bad code...
> 
> I among those who would love such things to happen :)

I don't want to drop it _yet_, but "ever"? Sure. When people are sure that 
KMS actually handles all the cases that old X does (maybe that's true 
now), and we've had more than just a couple of kernel releases of _stable_ 
Intel KMS, I suspect we can start thinking about "ok, nobody seriously 
uses 3D on Intel integrated graphics _and_ updates the kernel".

The fact that they'd still have a working X setup would make it generally 
much more palatable, I think. 

But we definitely need more than just a couple of kernel releases. So 
we're talking timescales of "more than a year of stable code". Whether 
that is "six months from now" or "two years from now", I can't judge. 

And people can try to convince me to be more or less aggressive about it, 
so take the above as a more of a personal opinion that is open to 
change than anything definite and final.

		Linus