Kernel support for graphics cards

[Dave Airlie]

> > 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?

size r200_dri.so
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
1827062   78784  145808 2051654  1f4e46 r200_dri.so

There is an OpenGL driver from the DRI project, you think we'd be
putting that in the kernel?

All that is required in the kernel is the DRM, a layer that can
providing locking, client tracking, DMA, and interrupt handling, once
you have those, then userspace applications can submit commands to the
card using the DMA mechanism and the hardwork of the graphics driver
can go live in userspace.. (like it does now..), the
modesetting/memory management are the two things preventing the full
architecture becoming apparent...

The problem we have mainly at the moment is the X startup sequence
where it decides to bypass Linux and go straight to the PCI busses and
things itself this causes no end of issues where X thinks it knows
better than the kernel where really doesn't have a clue...

Also with some drivers like radeon, the DRM and X driver may have
gotten to a state where making changes to one backwards compatible
with older versions of another is quite a tricky process...

Dave.