The end of user-space mode setting? [LWN.net]

The end of user-space mode setting?

Posted Jan 20, 2010 16:15 UTC (Wed) by MisterIO (guest, #36192)
In reply to: The end of user-space mode setting? by nix
Parent article: The end of user-space mode setting?

I doubt it's that simple. If the kernel supports only KMS, it will obviously try to do the MS itself and the old X will try to do MS too. I can see some problems there.

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The end of user-space mode setting?

Posted Jan 20, 2010 20:02 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

I doubt modesetting will ever be mandatory on graphics cards that support
a text mode at all. (People have been saying that cards with no text mode
support are just around the corner for years, but I've never seen one
outside a Sun workstation.)

The end of user-space mode setting?

Posted Jan 20, 2010 20:03 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

That is, of course, that I doubt that *kernel* modesetting will ever be
mandatory on cards with hardware text mode support, simply because all the
kernel needs to do to disable kernel modesetting on a particular card is
to do nothing. Breaking that would be pointless.

The end of user-space mode setting?

Posted Jan 26, 2010 12:43 UTC (Tue) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] (1 responses)

While that's true, at the very least it would mean no 3D acceleration, in some cases no acceleration at all.

The end of user-space mode setting?

Posted Jan 27, 2010 21:16 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Certainly on newer cards, yes. But, again, if you have a new card, you
probably have a new machine as well, and it's quite likely you *need* a
new kernel anyway. (And if you're changing the graphics card in an
existing machine, you can be assumed to be some variety of geek and thus
capable of building one.)