rfc/headsup: graphics driver packaging in F16+

[Phil Knirsch]

On 04/12/2011 06:12 PM, Adam Jackson wrote:
> There are two major package classes in Fedora that provide graphics
> drivers: xorg-x11-drv-*, and mesa-dri-drivers-*.
>
> In F15, mesa-dri-drivers now only includes drivers with DRI2 support
> (radeon, nvidia, intel) and the software renderer; if you want all the
> older drivers you have to install mesa-dri-drivers-dri1.  This list is:
>
>      i810, mga, r128, savage, sis, tdfx, unichrome
>
> Basically all of this hardware is, ahem, inept.  The most featureful
> device supported by these drivers would be the MGA G550, which just
> barely manages to do DirectX 7 (comparable to a Radeon 7000 or GeForce
> 2, both ~1999 vintage).  All the others are back in the DX6 stone age.
> For comparison, the baseline for the GPU in the phone in your pocket -
> and that platform layers like clutter more or less expect - is GLES 2.0,
> which is roughly comparable to DirectX 9.  We're rapidly approaching the
> point where the software renderer is going to be a more satisfying
> experience than hardware 3d support for these chips, both for features
> and for performance.
>
> So in my ideal world, we would simply drop the -dri1 subpackage (and for
> that matter, DRI1 support in the X server).
>
> For 2D we've got an xorg-x11-drivers metapackage that includes, well,
> pretty much everything, and which is included in comps as a default.
> This is lame, because it means a bunch of backwater drivers end up as
> critical path and can never possibly get tested.  (Smolt says there are
> all of 3 savage users.  I assume the number of i740 users is actually
> negative.)  The list of video drivers that see any actual use is
> probably something like:
>
>      ast, ati, cirrus, fbdev, geode, intel, mga, nouveau, openchrome,
>      qxl, sis/xgi, vesa, vmware
>

Would this affect the way KVM and specifically qemu-kvm in it's default 
setup for video using the cirrus driver would work? Just wondering if 
there would be any implications for the virt guys in that regard.

Thanks & regards, Phil

-- 
Philipp Knirsch              | Tel.:  +49-711-96437-470
Supervisor Core Services     | Fax.:  +49-711-96437-111
Red Hat GmbH                 | Email: Phil Knirsch <pknirsch at redhat.com>
Hauptstaetterstr. 58         | Web:   http://www.redhat.com/
D-70178 Stuttgart, Germany
Motd:  You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.