[Xorg-driver-geode] current status of X.org driver for AMD Geode GX and LX

[Martin-Éric Racine]

Just a quick note to update the community on where we stand:


DONE

1) As of now, we have vcons switching and DDC probing working again.

Both issues required patching the x86emu component of X.org core
server (3 patches: CPUID implementation, PCI bus emulation programming
error, BIOS port blacklist). This was necessary due to the X core
migration from its previous vm86 component. x86emu wasn't fully mature
code and upstream X maintainers fully expected that some bugs would
reveal themselves once the switch occurred.

The patches were prepared by Bart Trojanowski of Symbio Technologies
and have been accepted by Ubuntu for inclusion in their upcoming Hardy
release.

Meanwhile, upstream X maintainers are still reviewing the patches.
Help is welcome to motivate them in speeding up the merge on time for
the X server 1.5 release. Help is also welcome to motive other Linux
distributions to merge these patches.

2) Better default AMD driver settings.

Since recently, the default color depth was raised to 16-bit. This
should provide an adequate compromise between picture definition and
memory consumption. If necessary, this default depth can be changed
with configuration options:

On LTSP, adding the following option to lts.conf works well:

X_COLOR_DEPTH=24

On a desktop system, adding the following option to the Screen section
in /etc/X11/xorg.conf produces the same effect:

DefaultDepth 24

3) The 'ztv' module should work again.

We'd love to hear from people who successfully used the module. At
least, it now compiles cleanly again.


TODO

1) Port to RANDR 1.2.

We welcome help towards completing this.

2) Port to libpciaccess.

We welcome help towards completing this.

3) Addition of support for wide screen resolutions.

Bart Trojanowski has an experimental patch that implements this. We
still need to ensure that it won't adversely affect operation under
TFT panel. Help is welcome to further test this. Please report on your
success or failures to this list.

4) Merge AMD with NSC and call the result GEODE.

This is still a long-term goal. Help is welcome.


INFO

http://www.x.org/wiki/AMDGeodeDriver

-- 
Martin-Éric Racine
http://q-funk.iki.fi