Messages in this thread |  | | From | Albert Cahalan <> | Subject | Re: SVGA kernel chipset drivers. | Date | Fri, 31 May 1996 13:22:47 -0400 (EDT) |
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From: Ian main <imain@vcc.bc.ca> > On Thu, 30 May 1996, root wrote: > > > I was wondering if there are any plans incorporate any of the major video > > card chipsets into low level kernel driver support. SVGALIB at current > > has a very limited number of chipsets that it supports not to mention I > > would think a low level kernel driver would get better performence out of > > the video hardware. I for one would like to be able to use the features > > of my Matrox MGA Millenium in linux :) > > Call me crazy.. I had a talk with someone a while back about > this. We thought it'd be a good idea to have a single driver implemented > somehow.. one that X could use, and any other app that chose to. This > would have a few advantages. It would be more stable (ie no wierd text > distortion etc. like you get with SVGALIB sometimes) because the one > driver could have complete control over the video card. Also... Xfree > supports a lot more hardware that svgalib does. If some of the code for > the X drivers could be used in this new implementation, it would be much > better than SVGALIB is now.
A project called GGI is doing exactly that. Want to help support your video card or work on the library? You can join the GGI mailing list linux-ggi@eskimo.com by sending mail to listserv@eskimo.com or to the maintainer, irish@eskimo.com. Note that he will be gone for a few weeks, so be patient.
> Now I am not the one to say where this should be implemented.. > whether it be in the kernel, or just a standard library.. I dunno, but > it makes a lot of sense to me.
GGI is using a multi-part approach. All hardware IO and such is done in a kernel driver. The kernel provides acceleration features when the hardware has them, but does _not_ provide an emulation library. The userspace library uses acceleration if available, otherwise it just uses a mmapped framebuffer.
> Having a single _smart_ driver for the video hardware would make > graphical applications much more attainable, stable, standardized, > supported, etc.
Telnet in and 'kill -9' your X server. Now go to the console and... Oh, there is no more console. :-(
Together with the SAK patch, GGI fixes this completely.
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OK now, everyone interested in this _please_ join the GGI mailing list. This thread has been here before, several times.
Steffen Seeger (misc hacker, maintainer) http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~sse/scrdrv Andreas Beck (memory, libs) http://www-public.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de/~becka/doc/scrdrv.html
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