Re: Recent video-related commits: summary wanted

[Jan Danielsson <jan.m.danielsson%gmail.com@localhost>]

On 16/08/14 22:30, Gerard Lally wrote:
> There have been many video-related commits to the source tree recently,
> which I am doing my best to understand. Radeon, nouveau, drm, kms, and
> the like. It would be nice if someone would summarise what is happening
> and what difference it makes,

   In a strict practical sense..

   I bought a graphics card for my NetBSD system a few years back which
is no longer available in stores (since long ago).  When I mentioned
this card on IRC a while back someone said "That's the last ATI chip
you'll get working with accelerated graphics in NetBSD until DRM/KMS is
supported.".

   Essentially, not having DRM/KMS sets a date which more or less says
"chips released after this date won't work in xorg on your system,
because all the new drivers use DRM/KMS.".

   Getting DRM/KMS won't magically make all chips available to NetBSD,
but it'll allow more (and more importantly: somewhat recent) graphics
cards to be used with acceleration.

   In short: Assume that "all" new xorg drivers use DRM/KMS.

-- 
Kind Regards,
Jan