Intel Reflects On Past Graphics Releases

Jesse Barnes, one of the developers within Intel's Open-Source Technology Center whose responsibilities largely deal with Intel's Linux graphics work, has shared some thoughts and statistics on past graphics-related releases. Jesse looked at the number of DRM commits to recent Linux kernel releases, a few thoughts on Mesa and xf86-video-intel releases, and the release history of the X Server.

With the DRM work, Jesse concludes "at a high level that would seem to indicate that we did a pretty poor job of keeping the upstream kernel up-to-date, at least until recently." This isn't too surprising considering Linus Torvalds had referred to Intel's initial GEM patches as untested crap and considering the amount of time it's taken for a GPU kernel memory manager to enter the mainline Linux kernel and that kernel mode-setting still hasn't entered the Linux kernel even though it's been around for many months now in varying stages.

The X Server release schedule has also been a mess with its time between releases varying greatly (need we mention X Server 1.4.1 Is Released, No Joke). Jesse proposes de-modularizing it by pulling the drivers back into the X Server module so that it will require driver developers to ensure the server is in a good shape, but of course that isn't a sentiment widely shared.

After checking out Jesse's blog post, you may also be interested in our articles on Contributors To The X Server and The People Behind Mesa.