From owner-freebsd-x11@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 5 01:06:54 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C2F13548 for ; Mon, 5 Nov 2012 01:06:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rfg@tristatelogic.com) Received: from outgoing.tristatelogic.com (segfault.tristatelogic.com [69.62.255.118]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C6358FC08 for ; Mon, 5 Nov 2012 01:06:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from segfault-nmh-helo.tristatelogic.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by segfault.tristatelogic.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E34045081B for ; Sun, 4 Nov 2012 17:06:52 -0800 (PST) To: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org Subject: Re: r300-based boards... Are they now officially a lost cause? In-Reply-To: <20121105000213.GZ66994@over-yonder.net> Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:06:52 -0800 Message-ID: <20947.1352077612@tristatelogic.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" X-BeenThere: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: X11 on FreeBSD -- maintaining and support List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 01:06:54 -0000 In message <20121105000213.GZ66994@over-yonder.net>, "Matthew D. Fuller" wrote: >[0] One advantage of this is that, hey, writing a new GUI stack is > much easier, since you no longer need to write all the drivers > over again for every GUI stack. You only need to write them once > for every OS. And since "Open Source *nix" is really just a > long-winded way of saying Linux, that's no problem. It's > portable; it runs on both Red Hat _and_ Ubuntu! rofl > One implication is that the kernel "driver" isn't just a one-time > shim we write; a lot of the card-specific stuff is now in that. > So all the stuff that used to be written for each new GPU family > in xf86-video-ati etc by X.org in the UMS world, now needs to be > written for each new GPU family in the kernel by us (or ported > from the stuff written in the Linux kernel, more like). So that begs my next question... Is anybody on the FreeBSD side working as we speak to steal...er... I mean port whatever Linux is currently using in the way of kernel drivers for ATI and/or Nvidia? If not, then that would seem to be a problem, and that over time, FreeBSD will be left sadly behind, particularly when it comes to supporting new graphics chips as they are released in the future.