Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] staging: remove fbdev drivers

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Wed, 2016-11-23 at 10:03 +0200, Tomi Valkeinen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Since the fbdev framework is in maintenance mode and all new display drivers
> should be made with the DRM framework, remove the fbdev drivers from staging.
> 
> Note: the patches are created with git format-patch -D, so they can't be
> applied. Only for review.

I missed the discussion where this decision was made, I admit I am
unimpressed by it.

DRM drivers don't strike me as suitable for small/slow cores with dumb
framebuffers or simple 2D only accel, such as the one found in the ASpeed
BMCs.

With drmfb you basically have to shadow everything into memory & copy
over everything, and locks you out of simple 2D accel. For a simple text
console the result is orders of magnitude slower and memory hungry than
a simple fbdev.

At least that was the case last I looked at the DRM stuff with Dave,
maybe things have changed... 

Not everything has a powerful 3D GPU.

Ben.