[PATCH] Remove deprecated "nv" driver from autoconfiguration list

[Mark Kettenis]

> Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:10:39 -0700
> From: Alan Coopersmith <alan.coopersmith at oracle.com>
> 
> Mark Kettenis wrote:
> >> From: Alan Coopersmith <alan.coopersmith at oracle.com>
> >> Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:38:08 -0700
> >>
> >> Nvidia hardware will now default to "vesa" until an xorg.conf file is
> >> created to set it to "nv", "nvidia", or "nouveau".
> > 
> > The vesa driver only works on i386/amd64.  Where does this leave users
> > of other architectures?  Quite a few PowerPC Mac's have nvidia hardware.
> 
> Does fbdev work for them?  That's the fallback for non-x86/x64 systems
> in the autoconfig code.

fbdev is a Linuxism isn't it?  On OpenBSD we would end up with wsfb I
guess.  However, on most machines that will give me only an 8-bit
framebuffer, and it will be very slow on a large display.  Quite a
noticable step down from the "nv" driver.

> >> Given nvidia's recent announcement deprecating the nv driver,
> >> and that nv will never support DisplayPort, the vesa driver
> >> seems a safer default for autoconfiguration than nv.
> > 
> > I disagree.  If Nvidia decides to screw over the open source
> > community, it doesn't mean we have to bend over backwards.  Isn't
> > "nouveau" ready to take over the role of "nv" yet?
> 
> When this was discussed on IRC, people seemed uncertain if nouveau
> did the right thing on all nvidia cards to work well in the
> autoconfiguration.   Since I have no experience there (since it
> requires the nouveau DRM that's not yet ported to the kernel I use),
> I was leaving it up to others with more experience & knowledge to
> decide to add it.   (I did leave the nvidia vendor id's there to
> make it easier for them to do it later, or distros to patch in.)

I'm afraid we're in the same boat here.  No nouveau DRM module yet for
OpenBSD.  No proprietary "nvida" driver for us either (not that we'd
welcome a closed source binary blob).  So "nv" really is the only
usuable option for us.

> Ideally we'd move all of this out of the code and create xorg.conf.d
> files and then the nouveau & nvidia drivers could install their own
> files with matching rules for the hardware they support, and you'd
> get whichever driver you chose to install, but it's probably too late
> to do that for 1.8.