Intel GPU Driver Tries To Rip Out FBDEV Support

[AnonymousCoward]

Yes, and kmscon is userspace, which means less reliability in tough situations like OOM conditions.

It's trivial to stop the OOM killer from killing a process, just do "echo -17 > /proc/$pid/oom_adj", where $pid is the PID of the relevant process.

[Ericg]

Yes, and kmscon is userspace, which means less reliability in tough situations like OOM conditions.

Complete...and utter FUD.

Your VT may run in kernelspace but your shell, all of your commands, the login prompt, the text parser on the screen EVERYTHING that isn't the black background...is userspace. If you have an X-session started, it handles the switch to the VT anyway so you're screwed there. And once you GET to the VT, I've seen the login prompt take seconds to appear just for the simple fact that I was THAT constrained on memory. You don't get a "high priority" console just because you're on a VT...you're still in userspace. And you don't get a "Failsafe" console either just for being on a VT, its still just your standard shell. You want failsafe? Serial port. End of story. NOTHING else is failsafe and we could probably even break Serial if we tried.

[DeepDayze]

text mode =/= fbdev
And nvidia supports the former, so you're out of luck.

Yes nvidia's proprietary driver requires a text mode console and does whine loudly if you do use fbdev for providing a hi res console

[curaga]

Does anyone really use console decorations? And high res is still supported, you just do a straight up DRM console instead of FBDEV console (See KMSCon)

Yes, and kmscon is userspace, which means less reliability in tough situations like OOM conditions.

[kokoko3k]

I love this. Now nVidia's property drivers will be forced to either target kmdcon's fbdev since the kernel's is being deprecated, or get rewriten to use the kernel's own Mode Setting (KMS) instead of the driver's
Finally, I'll get to have decent resolutions on my linux console :P

I suppose AMD will also need to clean up some of it's Catalyst code now...

text mode =/= fbdev
And nvidia supports the former, so you're out of luck.

[peppepz]

What?

Did I understand correctly? They are completely ditching the VT subsystem without providing any equivalent replacement? Certainly this can't be.

[Northfear]

Hmmm..that's sucks. Browsing with links2, watching videos with mplayer and even playing SLD games (fb is the only true way to use ScummVM) on the console weekends was always pretty fun
And FBDEV is a pretty nice fallback option in case of X failure too

[Ibidem]

I've had to use virtual terminals as a fallback in situations where I've bricked my video drivers. It would sure be nice to retain high-res VTs if DRM is not working. Does anyone know if that ability will be removed as part of the process?

I presume you mean kernel DRM, not the userspace side of DRM?
If so, you never had high resolution VTs without kernel DRM, unless you use a straight framebuffer (unaccelerated) driver, whether native or VESA/VGA.

If you mean the userspace DRM interface, the short answer is yes:

Of course a general purpose distro propably wants David's kmscon for any
fallbacks needs and a system compositor to ditch the VT subsystem - atm my
machine here runs with the dummy console so that VT switching between different
X sessions still works ;-)

The longer answer is that the in-kernel accelerated graphics drivers all use DRM, the kernel VT emulation currently uses fbcon in graphics mode, and fbcon currently needs a framebuffer; no one wants to maintain the VT emulation, so "drmcon.ko" will probably not happen.

Now, I'll try to avoid a system without fbdev, even if it means not updating to a new kernel; for me, it would break Links2 and fbi, and it would spell the end for fbvnc, etc. Say what you will about "x is broken, you shouldn't use it": it works for me, and I can use a graphical browser without needing to fire up X.
...

Oh, the patches aren't quite what they're advertised as. They make fbdev support optional, by stubbing out all the hooks when you don't select DRM_I915_FBDEV. Which means that all of the analysis above is only true for CONFIG_DRM_I915_FBDEV=n.

[MaxToTheMax]

I've had to use virtual terminals as a fallback in situations where I've bricked my video drivers. It would sure be nice to retain high-res VTs if DRM is not working. Does anyone know if that ability will be removed as part of the process?

[c117152]

I love this. Now nVidia's property drivers will be forced to either target kmdcon's fbdev since the kernel's is being deprecated, or get rewriten to use the kernel's own Mode Setting (KMS) instead of the driver's
Finally, I'll get to have decent resolutions on my linux console :P

I suppose AMD will also need to clean up some of it's Catalyst code now...