GSOC idea: USB Multiseat Refinement

[Bernie Thompson]

Hi Lucas,

Great to hear of your interest and experience - sounds good for this.

2010/3/26 Lucas Ferreira <lnf07 at c3sl.ufpr.br> wrote
> Ther is one specific distribution to work on?

Could be any.  The idea is to get all the upstream pieces for fully
plug-and-play USB multiseat in shape to include in any/many distros.
In many ways it's close, but given how various key pieces are just
coming together, working with current/latest kernel, xorg release, and
gdm release is important.

If you want to make the distro(s) part of the proposal to Google --
Gentoo can always work. Fedora 13 and Debian Squeeze looks like they
have the right pieces.  Ubuntu would need to be 10.10 or later --
10.04 is missing some things AFAIK.

> If not, What version of Xorg and Linux kernel will be used to it?

For the kernel, use the udlfb module (DisplayLink USB framebuffer
driver) in staging tree of 2.6.34+, possibly with updates from
git.plugable.com. I'd be happy to help get any necessary patches back
into the kernel process.
For Xorg, version 1.8 should be good as a start (has the key udev and
input support), running with the udlfb compatible driver (not in X
distro yet; right now hosted at git.plugable.com).

I'm sure you've already seen this, but here's a recent Google post on
student applications
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/students-apply-now-for-google-summer-of.html

I'd be happy to help provide feedback on any applications making use
of udlfb, if anyone wants it before submitting to Google.

Another separate but related proposal which Google might go for is
taking the knowledge of how to program DisplayLink USB chips that's
already in the kernel fbdev driver (udlfb) -- and convert that to
kms/dri, along with the matching X server.  It would get USB graphics
more in sync with the changes happening in traditional PCIe graphics.

Plugable can donate USB graphics or USB terminal hardware for any
projects that get accepted by Google.

Best wishes,
Bernie Thompson
Plugable Technologies
http://plugable.com/