F21/F22: xorg-x11-drv: which for SiS?

[Alex Deucher]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 12:40 AM, Felix Miata <mrmazda at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Alex Deucher wrote on 2014-09-25 22:55 (UCT-0400):
>
>> On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
> ...
>>> The sis and mga drivers are yet more cases of pushing hardware toward
>>> landfills and recyclers before their suitability to task naturally expires.
>>> Fedora seems to be the leader in this anti-eco-friendly realm.
>
>> Most developers have limited numbers of round tuits as well.
>
> I'm sure that's true. A lot surely depends on their motivation to do whatever
> it is they do. Keeping old hardware going isn't likely to improve income or
> prestige. Something else has to be the motivation, and that motivation to be
> able to sustain needs arbitrary obstacles to that end avoided.
>

There will keep being new hardware and newer hardware usually has more
users than older hardware.  If it comes down to fixing a bug that
affects 20 people on recent hardware and 1 person on older hardware
it's a no brainer.

>> This older hardware still works perfectly fine with older versions of
>> distros or distros focused on older hardware.
>
> People need internet access that's secure, regardless of the age of their
> hardware. They don't upgrade an OS because they want to, but because they
> need to keep safe, and need access to web tools new enough not to cause
> access denial. Older versions thus become inappropriate. People who use some
> particular spin or distro don't appreciate being forced to choose between
> changing to something unfamiliar, or familiarity coupled with newfound
> insecurity, particularly if they know the insecurity trigger is nothing but a
> compilation flag (e.g. sse2 for qt5, IIRC).

Yes, yes, the old security argument.  On that same point, while a
newer software stack may fix some vulnerabilities, it may also
introduce vulnerabilities on older hardware due to lack of testing or
bitrot in older drivers.  Additionally older drivers may have some
inherent vulnerabilities.  E.g., non-KMS drivers require the xserver
run as root and bang on the hw directly from userspace which makes it
incompatible with some newer security paradigms.

>
>> In many cases the older
>> hardware can't handle the requirements of the newer distros.
>
> 3D? More bling? A bazillion background daemons some people might use? Often
> the "requirements" are no more than a compilation switch that's an arbitary
> choice, not to deny use to hardware on account of its age, which it does do,
> but to add nominally more speed to help compensate for code and feature
> bloat. Not everybody cares to have everything happen instantly, either at
> all, or to spend any money to get more. DEs like Mate, TDE, IceWM and XFCE
> exist why? So excessive requirements aren't insurmountable or unnecessary
> obstacles.

No one is stopping you from using a different DE or a lighter-weight
distro.  A lot of people like the new features.  Some of these new
features are a bad match for older hardware not only from a pure size
perspective.  They may require features or paradigms that are not
really possible or exposed with older hardware.  Having to support
multiple interface modules to keep older and older hardware working
adds overhead too.

>
>> Additionally, older hardware gets tested less and less on newer
>> distros so there is less and less chance of everything just working
>> smoothly.
>
> Hence reasons I do what I do. I have the hardware to do it, so I test with
> it, and report problems found.
>
>> Even if you test it, there's a good chance developers won't
>> have enough round tuits to actually fix the problem if you encounter
>> one.
>
> Unfortunate, but true. Of course for some, those round tuits are allocated
> and/or provided by commercial interests that don't profit from old machines
> keeping on keeping on. Lack by others need not be impediments to those with
> more noble motivation and availability.
>

Sure.  But so far no one has stepped up with that motivation for these
particular drivers.


>> And speaking of anti-eco-friendly, a lot of older hardware uses
>> more power than newer hardware
>
> How much is "a lot"? How does one tell whether any particular proposed
> replacement in fact uses more or less than that which is in use? Marketing
> specs are typically less than entirely trustworthy, designed to produce
> sales, not compare to out-the-door products.
>
> Full size desktops from 9 or more years ago typically got by just fine on
> 200w or 250w power supplies, significantly less than typically recommended
> for newer. Newer gfxcards often require *2* fans blowing on their coolers,
> not just one, or the none from yesteryear's machines I test on. That means
> heat generation, and thus power consumption, from the video component of
> newer systems has gone up, making buildings' A/C systems work harder whether
> there are eco-friendly labels on the machines or not.
>
> I'm aware of no hard and fast rules to make any determination whether any
> particular replacement would really be better. Much power, maybe in many
> cases most, consumed by older computers in actual use went into CRTs putting
> heat into the environment. That translates into consumption from newer, using
> less power hungry panel displays, skewed when compared to older, which often
> today are being used with newer, less expensive, space saving displays.
> Energy Star has been around long enough that very little not featuring it
> remains in use.

There were giant power hungry cards then and there are giant power
hungry cards now.  By the same token, there are lots of cards both
then and now with more modest power requirements.  Overall though, the
power use (especially at idle) is significantly lower with newer
hardware.  Today's monster cards use very little power at idle, much
less than the monster cards of years past.  Process shrinks and fine
grained dynamic clocking and voltage adjustments, and improved clock
and power gating save a lot of power compared to older asics.

Just looking at monitors, CRTs used tons of power.  LCDs reduced power
usage a lot.  Switching the backlighting on LCDs to LEDs also saves a
lot of power.  Old monitors used more power than new ones.  Old
motherboards and graphics chips did as well.

Just look at battery life in laptops or tablets.  While battery
technology has improved somewhat, much of the improvement is from
lower power use of the components in the laptops.

>
>> so it has it's own anti-eco-friendly
>> costs.  You should be recycling anyway ;)
>
> Where did I write anything that says I'm not? You expect people to purchase
> newer just so that they can recycle working older? The bulk of machines I've
> acquired, including those I kept to test on, were gratis acquisitions,
> recycling on its own level. Without more such, I'd have to invest money above
> my past pattern. For what, just to give other recyclers something to do? The
> motherboard that spawned this thread is actually my latest acquistion, one of
> my 5 newest counting the two that run here 24/7. Refurbing old machines with
> new operating systems and giving them new homes *is* recycling, recycling
> which arbitrary cutoff of driver support for would put a stop to.

I was making a joke about your reference to landfills :)

As has been said over and over, it's not arbitrary.  Someone has to do
the work to maintain, package, and audit these old packages.  If there
is no one there to do the work what do you expect?  The older your
hardware is, the fewer people are interested in it; at some point you
run out of interested people.

Alex