Re: Call for Foundation-supported Project Ideas

Proposal:
Clean up the xorg graphics card/driver list and remove these ones that
do no longer work.

Explanation:

On 11/24/21, Jason Bacon <bacon4000@gmail.com> wrote:
> One hurdle I've not yet been able to conquer is automatic GPU
> configuration.  The best I've been able to do so far is an interactive
> script that requires some rather technical decisions from the users:
>
> It would be really nice is we could replace this with a simple, maybe
> even automated tool to configure a working Xorg setup on most common
> hardware.  Wouldn't matter to me if it falls back on scfb or vesa in
> many cases, as long as it's easy to use and produces a working desktop.
>
> Bonus points for not requiring a reboot to properly activate the DRM
> module.
>
> I wouldn't obsess about making it work on *all* hardware off-the-bat.  I
> think it would be more fruitful to first develop a system that works
> *really* well on the most common hardware.  Then we have a product that
> people will want, which will help recruit the people we'll need to work
> on expanding hardware support.

I have done this already.
My script does autodetect and autoconfigure *all* graphics cards/chips
for which are drivers available in FreeBSD.
It also works with multiple graphics cards, autodetecting whether they
can work together or not (when drivers cannot coexist).
The script is not yet ready for release, as autoconfiguring multi-head
configurations (eg multi-monitor configurations either with multiple
GPU outputs and/or multiple graphics cards) is still WIP.
(If you are interested in this topic anyway, please either mail me
directly or open a separate discussion thread.)

However, the problem is that some drivers can no longer work because
libxaa.so (and maybe other xorg libs, too) has been removed upstream
10 years ago already.
See this for more info: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257417

This is the background of my proposal:
- Test all graphics drivers on real hardware whether they are still
functional in currently-supported FreeBSD releases
- Remove all those drivers that can no longer work because xorg
upstream dropped support.
- Feed back to xorg upstrean so they can obsolete/remove these now
useless drivers.

I'd certainly be more motivated to do this if it is being sponsored,
as I have already collected most (except for a few very rare and
expensive AGP graphics cards) of the hardware in question.
Because, 1. it needs some money to obtain these lacking (past
high-end, mainly workstation usage) cards, and 2. it takes some time
to walk through them and test every and each of these.