Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 21 Oct 2001 10:13:40 +0100 | From | Jonathan Morton <> | Subject | Re: The new X-Kernel ! |
| |
> > And if they *do* understand it, from a dispassionate point of view, >> it does seem to make sense to put graphics drivers in the kernel - >> they're implemented as "device drivers" in every other desktop OS. >> Except MacOS X, where's it's an application layer like glibc, but >> nobody understand OS X yet beyond the hardest of developers. > >:) It would be interesting to learn more on it (if infomartion is available). >afaik it's a unix like system in its core.
Take a look around Apple's site, particularly the developer section. There's documentation in spades if you can read PDFs. Fact, that's one of the best things about Apple - they document nearly everything in public view.
> > But they don't realise that XFree86 has an *enormous* amount of >> developer time behind it, which would need to be duplicated to make >> it work in kernel space with full backwards compatibility. Oh, and >> did I mention this would all be for one platform - XFree86 is > > designed to run on many! It would also bloat the kernel tremendously. > >Also it would be nice if frame buffer can support 3D hw accelerated >gfx functions. >And so on. So probably a better interaction should be implemented between >various gfx elements of a tipical Linux system. [I don't know GGI very well >but AFAIK its goals are very interesting]
Come to think of it, the kernel already supports a fair amount of video hardware, through framebuffer. I don't know how capable that is, though, beyond displaying and scrolling text in various resolutions, and as a place for XFree86 to fall back to. If fbdev is accelerated, some kind of userspace utility and kernel-space cleanup would potentially allow fully-accelerated (including 3D?) graphics, with much of the hard work in kernel space. Or is fbdev just a dumb framebuffer and I'm totally off track?
-- -------------------------------------------------------------- from: Jonathan "Chromatix" Morton mail: chromi@cyberspace.org (not for attachments) website: http://www.chromatix.uklinux.net/vnc/ geekcode: GCS$/E dpu(!) s:- a20 C+++ UL++ P L+++ E W+ N- o? K? w--- O-- M++$ V? PS PE- Y+ PGP++ t- 5- X- R !tv b++ DI+++ D G e+ h+ r++ y+(*) tagline: The key to knowledge is not to rely on people to teach you it. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |