Kernel support for graphics cards

[Dimitar Toshev]

On Sunday 08 January 2006 13:42, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:23:23 +1100 Bojan Smojver <bojan at rexursive.com> 
babbled:
> > I read Keith's excellent paper "The (Re)Architecture of the X Window
> > System"
> > (http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/xarch_ols2004/xarch-ols2004-html/) and
> > was encouraged by the direction that X is finally taking - the one of
> > rapid and modern development.
> >
> > I do have a few questions in relation to kernel support for graphics
> > cards though. Is hardware support for graphics cards in X going to be
> > marked deprecated in the near future (i.e. in favour of complete
> > Linux/*BSD/Solaris/<insert_flavour_here> kernel support)? If yes, will
> > it be accompanied by the dual release of X (i.e. one source tree with
> > deprecated hardware drivers, one with "hands-off" hardware), like we've
> > seen in the case of modularisation? And finally, is there a page on
> > freedesktop.org wiki that deals with the transition (specs for kernel
> > folks, status of kernel drivers, roadmap etc.)?
> >
> > PS. What prompted me to ask this is the following sentence from the
> > paper: "All of these systems directly manipulate hardware registers
> > without any coordination among them." That really scares me - it almost
> > sounds like the mess that DOS used to be...
>
> quick answer: no.  kernels are not going to have graphics drivers any time
> soon - if ever. :)

Why not? Kernels have drivers for every other piece for hardware, so what's 
stopping them from having gfx drivers?