Re: SVGA kernel chipset drivers.

Ian main (imain@vcc.bc.ca)
Fri, 31 May 1996 01:41:50 -0700 (PDT)


On Thu, 30 May 1996, root wrote:

> I was wondering if there are any plans incorporate any of the major video
> card chipsets into low level kernel driver support. SVGALIB at current
> has a very limited number of chipsets that it supports not to mention I
> would think a low level kernel driver would get better performence out of
> the video hardware. I for one would like to be able to use the features
> of my Matrox MGA Millenium in linux :)
>
> Thanks

Call me crazy.. I had a talk with someone a while back about
this. We thought it'd be a good idea to have a single driver implemented
somehow.. one that X could use, and any other app that chose to. This
would have a few advantages. It would be more stable (ie no wierd text
distortion etc. like you get with SVGALIB sometimes) because the one
driver could have complete control over the video card. Also... Xfree
supports a lot more hardware that svgalib does. If some of the code for
the X drivers could be used in this new implementation, it would be much
better than SVGALIB is now.
Now I am not the one to say where this should be implemented..
whether it be in the kernel, or just a standard library.. I dunno, but
it makes a lot of sense to me.
Having a single _smart_ driver for the video hardware would make
graphical applications much more attainable, stable, standardized,
supported, etc.

Ian