radeon driver heading in wrong direction :-(.

[Terry Barnaby]

> What we need is to take a year, devise some test programs people
> can run to check the actual behavior of video cards against the
> individual bits of information described in the docs, then encourage
> folks to run the tests and report all the flaws in the docs which
> we could then ask ati to explain (but that is unlikely to happen,
> it is just a fantasy I have :-).

What would be interesting, at least for me, would be a write up from
someone who knows on how Fedora/Linux graphics development is being
done, how many are actively working on it, what testing is being
done and what direction it is going and any significant mile stones
that are coming up.

I may be wrong, but I get the feeling that the graphics development is
very ad-hoc and relatively un-tested. As mentioned above and others
supporting the huge number of various graphics boards is hard. No single
developer or group of developers can hope to have even a good percentage
of the available graphics cards/chipsets to test releases on.

On workstations, after a stable kernel and core shared libraries I think
the stability of the graphics systems comes next. Due to the stronger
implementation of graphics within the kernel (DRM, KMS etc.) with F12
I am now getting kernel panics, due to graphics, on a number of my systems.
I have not had the experience of kernel panics under Linux for many many
years (except when developing drivers myself :) ), This is bad.

I really think that to get useful Linux/Fedora graphics drivers a more
organised development system with more organised testing needs to be
implemented. Probably the best way to get the testing done is by using
the Fedora community users as they have most of the Graphics cards.
But, what we need is some organisation/group to be responsible for the
graphics system in Fedora, provide a simple to use test system and a
web based reporting system that normal users can easily use. This would
list graphics cards/chips used and failed/good tests. This organisation
should closely work with the upstream graphics development providing
testing feedback, issues and promoting certain goals etc.

I think this should be combined with a graphics-testing package repository
so those users who are willing to contribute to the testing, can get the
latest graphics related updates and test them easily.

Above all every one working and/or testing this should be able to see that
things are improving and going in the right direction and the results. A
years push, by as many as possible, could see some real advances.

Obviously this would take some resources, but considering the state of Graphics
in Linux, I would have thought some commercial enterprises might help with
some funding ?