Mesa's Classic Drivers Have Been Retired - Affecting ATI R100/R200 & More

[microcode]

How do I check if my GNOME Wayland session is using crocus or classic driver? Before it was easy to just run glxinfo to tell which driver is in use (although I'm not sure if it would have told that difference) but now that doesn't seem to be available (on Arch Linux).

glxinfo is available on Arch, pacman has a tool to tell you which package provides a binary, go find it.

[tildearrow]

Well, MESA 21.3.x supports your hardware, no? And going forward i am sure distributions will just include MESA classic drivers in a separate package anyway, so nothing was lost. It is not like you expect tons of new features and optimizations on your Ivy Bridge in 2022 and onward....

I never expected "tons of new features and optimizations". The only thing I expected is support.

[TemplarGR]

I never expected "tons of new features and optimizations". The only thing I expected is support.

What does the word "support" mean? Define "support".

Does your machine run? Can you use all of its features? Will you still be able to keep using the legacy mesa drivers package in future distros for a significant time in the future? There is your support right there.

[CommunityMember]

I never expected "tons of new features and optimizations". The only thing I expected is support.

Open Source freedom is about *your* freedom to take the software and do with it as you wish. I believe that freedom is being maintained.

[oiaohm]

I never expected "tons of new features and optimizations". The only thing I expected is support.

Support requires someone to maintain the code base. The old drivers being removed has a lot of unique code.they cost more developer time to maintain.

i915g and crosus due to being galluim3d based share a lot of code with all the other galluim3d drivers this does result being cheaper to keep around.

As I said mesa project would not say no to someone deciding to make a galluim3d drivers for the dropped hardware. The dropped drivers are in what is called a bitrotted state from lack of good maintenance as well.

The hard reality if their were interested parties in the drivers of the hardware being dropped who made new galluim3d drivers the long term maintenance cost would be 1/20 than what each of those old dropped drivers alone maintenance cost. There is just a point were something is not cost effective.

Just expecting support also says I expect a free lunch always. Open source does not promise you a free lunch always. At times the point comes around where you have to pay for the Lunch.

[Tomin]

glxinfo is available on Arch, pacman has a tool to tell you which package provides a binary, go find it.

Ah, you are absolutely right. I checked it in hurry earlier today and ended up installing mesa-demos. The right package was mesa-utils.

However, I think I misremembered, at least to me glxinfo doesn't seem to tell which Mesa driver is in use.
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 4400 (HSW GT2)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5 (Core Profile) Mesa 21.2.5

No word crocus or i965 anywhere. So how do you tell those two apart (on GNOME/Wayland if that matters)?

[ElectricPrism]

If capitalism is "vote with your wallet"

Then open source is "vote with your time"

If anyone cares enough about this, I'm sure we'll see something akin to MATE to Gnome, or Trinity to KDE. It's open source, the code is there if people want to make something happen.

Eliminating 200k of code for hardware ~15-20 years old sounds like a huge relief, hopefully this will be like pruning a tree and the next year the tree just comes out beautiful.

[oiaohm]

If capitalism is "vote with your wallet"

Then open source is "vote with your time"

If anyone cares enough about this, I'm sure we'll see something akin to MATE to Gnome, or Trinity to KDE. It's open source, the code is there if people want to make something happen.

Eliminating 200k of code for hardware ~15-20 years old sounds like a huge relief, hopefully this will be like pruning a tree and the next year the tree just comes out beautiful.

Open source is vote with wallet and time. There are parties you can pay to do development.

Its the elimination of the unique special beast to maintain. When I say unique special beast those old drivers have old custom ways to process glsl to the gpu language you move to galluim3d drivers 90% of that stuff is shared between all the galluim3d drivers and this is only the tip of iceberg.

The reality if there were interested parties as there has been with i915g and crosus new galluim3d drivers could be made for the new hardware. These old bits of hardware are only opengl 1.3 at best. i915g says under a year of someone decide to put the time in to get to a functional galluim3d driver.

There is not a huge insane amount of investment required compare to the ongoing costs attempting to keep those legacy drivers around. Remember unique code equals not transferable skills as well for those old drivers. So someone working on 1 galluim3d driver can look at code base of another galluim3d driver with a problem and have a fair chance of being able to fix it problems with light knowledge about the hardware and driver. Someone working on a galluim3d driver or another one of these old to be remove drivers goes to one of these old to be remove drivers that needs a fix they have to learn the code base before they can fix anything zero transferable skill here.

Yes zero transferable skill is why those old drivers are slowly bit-rotting in the direction that some point in the future they will stop working with no one with the time to fix.

The reality in some of these cases projects just have to draw the line in the sand. Yes this is a line in the sand that is movable if someone steps up to make new drivers for this old hardware. When this was proposed 8 years ago everything older than intel Gen 8 graphics was to be dropped off the cliff the fact parties steps forwards moved this axe point on Intel back to gen1 graphics. This is still not set in stone even at this late hour.

[rmfx]

Great code shower!

[pal666]

And now it's impossible to make a retro gaming rig anymore. Windows XP doesn't support Steam, while Linux doesn't support the hardware.

Now we need a 3rd party that makes a Windopws XP/Linux mix.

you can just use retro linux with old mesa