Early Adopters Already Hit By Fedora Dropping Old Linux GPU Drivers

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Folks on cash economies (like many "immigrants" here in the US) and those who do not have ebay accounts may not be able to find old parts no longer sold at retail unless a friend has them. I myself do not have Ebay or any accounts with anyone (Google, Facebook, etc) that attempts to verify identity with SMS messages, etc. An r500 card I dropped into an early P4 to test Cinnamon and GNOME cost me somewhere around $40 in a store that had it about a year ago,

Much of this sounds reasonable in theory, but in the real world most linux users are still of a techie nature. Or, they're one step removed from someone who is highly technically inclined. Of the people in my family who are linux users, for example, none of them would be so if not for myself.

I am not saying that you're wrong, that there will be some who don't have any kind of access to Ebay, but the odds of it are probably greater than winning the lottery. Even $40 is not a lot to ask, but that much is not necessary.

The point is this: With as rare as how many of these cards are, nobody wants to support them. The generic drivers become the "better driver" due to the nature of having more support.(coders developing and maintaining) It's the sad but real effect of so many older cards not having companies behind them who were more open with their specificiations, sooner.

[Luke]

A "shim layer" for the old drivers would be ideal

Much of this sounds reasonable in theory, but in the real world most linux users are still of a techie nature. Or, they're one step removed from someone who is highly technically inclined. Of the people in my family who are linux users, for example, none of them would be so if not for myself.

I am not saying that you're wrong, that there will be some who don't have any kind of access to Ebay, but the odds of it are probably greater than winning the lottery. Even $40 is not a lot to ask, but that much is not necessary.

The point is this: With as rare as how many of these cards are, nobody wants to support them. The generic drivers become the "better driver" due to the nature of having more support.(coders developing and maintaining) It's the sad but real effect of so many older cards not having companies behind them who were more open with their specificiations, sooner.

Some way to develop a shim to allow the old drivers to work in current X would be the best fix it seems to me. That way, a single shim package that emulates some old version of X would accomodate all outdated drivers-both for non Big Three cards and also old prop drivers for no longer supported cards. So long as Nvidia is kept from using KMS it should be possible to run old UMS drivers through some kind of shim layer. This removes the need for any further work on those drivers, and ensures that they actually WORK if any driver works with the shim layer. Keep in mind, old LAPTOPS are a problem Ebay can't fix even for those who have accounts (I do not), unless they have the money for a whole replacement laptop.

[Mat2]

@Luke:
The API is stable AFAIK and therefore the work with packaging is minimal.

Ubuntu has been blacklisting all non-KMS drivers (except for uvesafb) since 12.04.
This is probably a good balance, but there are really people using old hardware out there.

mateusz@mateusz-ubuntu:/etc/modprobe.d$ cat blacklist-framebuffer.conf 
# Framebuffer drivers are generally buggy and poorly-supported, and cause
# suspend failures, kernel panics and general mayhem.  For this reason we
# never load them automatically.
blacklist aty128fb
blacklist atyfb
blacklist radeonfb
blacklist cirrusfb
blacklist cyber2000fb
blacklist cyblafb
blacklist gx1fb
blacklist hgafb
blacklist i810fb
blacklist intelfb
blacklist kyrofb
blacklist lxfb
blacklist matroxfb_base
blacklist neofb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist pm2fb
blacklist rivafb
blacklist s1d13xxxfb
blacklist savagefb
blacklist sisfb
blacklist sstfb
blacklist tdfxfb
blacklist tridentfb
#blacklist vesafb
blacklist vfb
blacklist viafb
blacklist vt8623fb
mateusz@mateusz-ubuntu:/etc/modprobe.d$

[rabcor]

I personally think there should be separate versions of the kernel available. The one we currently have, and one that is exactly the same, but with support for old hardware removed. That way everyone can be happy meaning that we can have a legacy kernel that supports old shit and people on outdated systems can use, and a modern kernel that drops support for hardware that isn't marketed any longer for people who have up to date systems.

[chrisb]

While that's possible, there are also some later CPU's that really don't have PAE. Most notably, Pentium M, once a very popular mobile processor ("Centrino" brand). All Pentium M Banias and Dothan series, except for Sonoma, don't have PAE.

Those Pentium M have PAE support but it is turned off by default. You can enable it at boot time by using a recent Linux kernel and the "forcepae" kernel parameter.