End of year Xorg status rant

[abi]

On 01.01.2017 18:36, Beeblebrox via freebsd-x11 wrote:
> Interesting discussion; thank you for all comments.
> I have several questions:
>
> * Is TrueOS/PC-BSD ahead of FreeBSD on the Desktop? If so, why? The answer is probably "depends on the card", but again, is it ahead of FreeBsd for certain cards and why? If it's because they have integrated Matt's work, why has FreeBSD not opted to do so?
Yes, it's ahead. They merged Matt branch. As for FreeBSD, who must adopt 
it ? FreeBSD has phabricator review system, I don't remember I saw 
review for this patch. Also, I tested Matt's branch on my Skylake 
laptop. I can't say intel driver in current state has some benefits 
against fb. The primary disadvantages of fb driver is lack of support 
for backlight and resume. The same applies for Matt's branch. Also, X 
crashing from time to time and I observed visual artifacts. If this is 
true for haswell and lower, I doubt branch will be committed without 
some sort of WITH_NEW_DRM knob. And I'm not sure this can be implemented 
using current ports infrastructure.
> * Does the problem have anything to do with the Kernel Compat Layer for Linux (https://wiki.freebsd.org/linux-kernel)? I'm asking to understand the extent of the issue.
It will die. Just when CentOS userland drops 2.6 kernel support.

>
> * Other than that, perhaps we could try and slice this problem in the short term from another angle:
> Which GPU cards work (and are expected to work with new hardware) as of now? If anything, this discussion shows that the Graphics Wiki page (https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics) is inadequate for GPU selection. Perhaps it could be updated to a parametrised format showing functions by column each GPU card supports (rather than simply works"/"does not work").
Work for what? If you need cuda, nothing works. If you type on your 
laptop and watching ponies in youtube, intel works with fb driver. You 
will get full resolution and visually flawless picture.