Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 00:37:29 -0800 From: Eric Anholt <eta@lclark.edu> To: David Xu <davidxu@freebsd.org> Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: My project wish-list for the next 12 months Message-ID: <1102063049.66100.71.camel@leguin> In-Reply-To: <41AFC2EE.9080404@freebsd.org> References: <41AE3F80.1000506@freebsd.org> <41AE55D7.8020709@freebsd.org> <41AEA4B8.6080508@acm.org> <20041202075530.3b33db1b.flynn@energyhq.es.eu.org> <1101973835.66100.15.camel@leguin> <41AFC2EE.9080404@freebsd.org>
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On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 17:35, David Xu wrote: > I maybe jump onto wrong thread, but FreeBSD's lack of > graphics framebuffer which is in Linux really kicked away > lots of embedded projects, one is QT-embedded which > simple can not be run on FreeBSD, many embedded projects > here just need it. We do definitely need framebuffer. But I think we'd be best served by trying to drag mode-setting code out of the X Server and into a userland library, rather than integrating it all into the kernel. (At most, implement a simple fixed mode supported everywhere in the kernel for intial boot, then a userland system of some sort takes over after that). Mode-setting code is huge, easy to mess up, and I don't think we have the resources to do it well. However, if someone (I fear doing this myself) were to get it into a userland library, we could probably convince the X Server to use it, and maybe even Linux kernel folks, and end up keeping all grahpics driver developers focused on a single codebase rather than split across many OSes or kernel versus X Server. Here's why I personally think this is really important: We've got Mesa-solo laying around -- OpenGL hardware acceleration on top of a framebuffer, if FreeBSD just had a framebuffer system. Then we've got the Xglx server, which runs on top of an OpenGL implementation and provides at least some of the Render acceleration that I was talking about in the parent message. Also, a number of X Server folks want to get mode-setting moved out of the X Server entirely -- let it be configured by system daemons, probably controlled over dbus. It would be very nice if FreeBSD happened to be ready for what Linux people would like to do. -- Eric Anholt eta@lclark.edu http://people.freebsd.org/~anholt/ anholt@FreeBSD.org Thank goodness for the 22nd Amendment
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