Fedora 12 Graphics Issues: Cancel F13 and concentrate on fixing F12 ?

[Terry Barnaby]

On 11/26/2009 10:12 PM, Dave Airlie wrote:
>
>> Yes, some graphics boards I am sure work well, although 3D should really
>> be working on all cards in 2009 ...
>> But this is the point, there are a lot of different graphics boards, and
>> so a much wider scope for the testing is required here which requires more
>> users over more time with many different applications using basically the
>> same software.
>
> Why do you think 3D should be working in 2009 as opposed to any previous
> years btw? I'm interested in the logic that leads to this point.
>
> GPUs have gotten more and more complex every 6 months for about 8 years
> now. A current radeonhd 4000 series bears little resemblence to the
> radeon r100 that was out then. The newer GPUs require a full complier to
> be written for an instruction set more complex than x86 in some places.
> The newer GPUs get more and more varied modesetting combos that all
> require supporting.
>
> Now I'd would guess (educated slightly) that the amount of code required
> to write a full driver stack for a modern GPU has probably gone up
> 40-50x what used to be required, whereas the number of open source
> community developers has probably doubled since 2001. Also newer GPU
> designs have forced us to redesign the Linux GPU architecture, this
> had to happen in parallel with all the other stuff, again with similiar
> number of developers. So yes it sucks but it should point out why
> there is no reason why 3D should really be working on all cards.
>
> Dave.
>
Hi Dave,

My logic, if you call it that :), is that for an operating system in 2009
not to have good 3D support across most graphics cards is not good.
In earlier years, when 3D was a new beast and not used much that was
not an issue, but I would have thought that it should be a reasonably
core part of a Desktop computers functionality these days.

As you say, and I'm sure you know better than me, new graphics chipsets
are complicated and difficult to get working correctly, especially with
limited documentation. In my case though I am using Intel 845G, ATI R200
and ATI R300 based chipsets which are quite old now.

I can see you are working hard on fixing the ATI issues, I thank you
very much for all this work, and I will try and feed back issues I
am having and help out if I can.