[RFC] Deprecation and removal of the drm2 driver

[Cy Schubert]

In message <a7sv-ebj7-wny at FreeBSD.org>, Jan Beich writes:
> Slawa Olhovchenkov <slw at zxy.spb.ru> writes:
>
> > On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 07:58:10PM +0200, Niclas Zeising wrote:
> >
> >> [ Cross posted to freebsd-current@ and freebsd-x11 at .  Please respect 
> >> reply-to and send all replies to freebsd-x11 at .  Thanks! ]
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Hi!
> >> I propose that we remove the old drm2 driver (sys/dev/drm2) from 
> >> FreeBSD.  I suggest the driver is marked as deprecated in 11.x and 
> >> removed from 12.0, as was done for other drivers recently.  Some 
> >> background and rationale:
> >> 
> >> The drm2 driver was the original port of a KMS driver to FreeBSD.  It 
> >> was done by Konstantin Belousov to support Intel graphics cards, and 
> >> later extended by Jean-Sébastien Pédron as well as Konstantin to match 
> >> what's in Linux 3.8.  This included unstable support from Haswell, but 
> >> nothing newer than that.
> >> 
> >> For quite some time now we have had the graphics/drm-stable-kmod and 
> >> graphics/drm-next-kmods which provides support for modern AMD and Intel 
> >> graphics cards.  These ports, together with the linuxkpi, or lkpi, has 
> >
> > What about old graphics card? I am have notebook w/ i945 chipset, is
> > this supported by graphics/drm-*?
> >
> > And what about nvidia?
> > (sorry, I am not developer this drivers, I am just user, I am don't
> > know what need for nvidia work etc)
>
> NVIDIA dropped 32bit driver since 396.* series. None of x11/nvidia-driver*
> currently depend on either drm.ko or drm2.ko. However, Linux driver
> appears to depend on DRM/KMS since 364.12.

I think that if we want to still keep i386 viable, maybe some effort 
needs to be put into 915resolution to help VESA look somewhat 
reasonable. IIRC, as it's been a long time since I've looked at this, a 
person will need a custom xorg.conf. However IIRC that model breaks if 
person switches between a laptop monitor and an external monitor. The 
problem is fixable however I didn't have a open evening to look at it 
when I did.

The 915resolution option isn't exactly available to those unwilling or 
unable to tinker a little.


-- 
Cheers,
Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com>
FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy at FreeBSD.org>   Web:  http://www.FreeBSD.org

	The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few.