Major Open-Source ARM Announcement Coming

There's a very exciting open-source announcement coming soon that will please an increasing number of ARM Linux users and fans of open-source graphics drivers.

This forthcoming announcement, which isn't being detailed yet but will be yet another Linux graphics exclusive for Phoronix the near future, is something entirely different from the other recent open-source ARM Linux graphics advancements. As something until then. let's recap the existing open-source ARM graphics activities:

- The Lima driver project that's sponsored by Codethink and led by Luc Verhaegen as a reverse-engineered open-source ARM Mali graphics driver. Here's the latest update on Lima from LinuxTag Berlin back in May.

- The OpenFIMG driver as an in-progress open driver for the Samsung S3C6410.

- The FSF high priority project to create an open-source PowerVR graphics driver. PowerVR is used by a lot of ARM SoC vendors, but this open-source project is basically dead and basically never made any progress. Not many open-source Linux developers can work on reverse-engineering PowerVR graphics due to being tainted by their current or former employer (Nokia, among others).

- Freedreno as an open-source Qualcomm Snapdragon driver. This open-source reverse-engineered driver is actually being worked on by a Texas Instruments developer, since he can't do any open-source driver writing on PowerVR since he's tainted by working on PowerVR graphics within TI's OMAP platform. Freedreno recently hit a 3D rendering milestone.

- A reverse-engineered NVIDIA Tegra 2 driver.

- Aside from the various open-source reverse-engineering projects on the 3D side for ARM graphics, there's also the few mainline open-source ARM SoC bits on the kernel side for graphics with the Direct Rendering Manager: Samsung Exynos and OMAPDRM.

That is what's been happening in the public spotlight to date, but there's something else entirely different on the horizon, as I first mentioned on Twitter.

Stay tuned! Meanwhile tonight the beer of choice is Lindemans Framboise. As regular Phoronix readers will understand, it's unusual that I drink a beer that doesn't comply with the Reinheitsgebot and not from Bavaria -- even when giving beer to Linux-friendly companies like Valve Software.

It's fruity... It's almost like a pie. But it's an awful beer; I'm generally not a fan of Belgian Lambics.

Prost! Thanks to Phoronix reader allquixotic for providing this beer; other Phoronix readers can buy a beer by providing PayPal tip. Subscribing to Phoronix Premium is also an additional way to see more Phoronix exclusives going forward whether it be about graphics drivers, gaming, and other Linux topics. For those that track me down to deliver beer, there should be a Phoronix meet-up next weekend in Munich followed by a 4.0-Suldal release event a week later in Augustiner-land.