2008 Linux Graphics Survey Results

[_txf_]

Ok, I do not own a laptop, so I never use suspend. Hibernation/Suspend to Disk is useless anyway because you would read in worst case more data than you would do with a normal boot when you memory is big and used.

I beg to differ. ATM it is far faster for me to suspend to disk than it is to boot up a fresh new session, open all my apps and files, that is when it doesn't completely screw up and then you're stuck with the penalty of actually having to restart. The utility of suspend to disk is reduced, in my opinion, by suspend to ram (hibernate).

Personally I use hibernate, which is lightning fast and these days and laptops can last days on suspend whilst running on battery.

[RonJohn]

And you're wrong. KMS is extremely important for suspend and hibernation, which is critical for laptop users. It's a huge boon for display hotplug.

Interesting. This should be emphasized more often.

KMS is way more interesting to me than DRI2 is. GEM interests me most of all, of course. Without it, neither DRI2 nor KMS could really work.

Which of these actually controls drawing pixels on the console? DRI/DRI2?

I ask that because currently I use the nvidia binary driver, but boot directly in text-only console mode, and I can (if X is horked) work from it or easily switch to the nv driver (symlinks are soooo handy!) and get to the GUI if it's just the nvidia driver.

[Jimmy]

I'm glad others have done their homework. Had I done mine, I would have voted for KMS too. I guess it's just poorly described. Flicker free boot...who cares. Better suspend/resume you say? Now I seem to care a bit more.

[Svartalf]

Ok, I do not own a laptop, so I never use suspend. Hibernation/Suspend to Disk is useless anyway because you would read in worst case more data than you would do with a normal boot when you memory is big and used.

That's not 100% accurate, Kano... Suspending to disk takes a snapshot of the system RAM and flushes it to disk, where it resides until you restart. It's "less useful" than saving files out for many instances, but there may be instances where you want it to be just where you left off (There have been instances thereof in my past, I just won't bore anyone with them... ). It's just not useful to you in your past experience. That, my friend, doesn't make it useless to everyone.

[DoDoENT]

Ok, I do not own a laptop, so I never use suspend. Hibernation/Suspend to Disk is useless anyway because you would read in worst case more data than you would do with a normal boot when you memory is big and used.

This is true for hibernation/suspend to disk. But what about suspend to RAM? Most of laptop users use it a lot. And it still is at least 2 times slower than on windows (especially while using fglrx - open source driver suspends and resumes the graphics quicker, but still slower than windows!).

[bridgman]

I guess the argument for suspend/resume is that it maintains your application state as well ?

The other advantage to KMS I see is that it puts all of the state info you need for good power management in one place. Right now the engine state is in drm (unless you're running without 3d) and the display state is in ddx, but you really need both to make on-the-fly power management decisions.

[Kano]

Ok, I do not own a laptop, so I never use suspend. Hibernation/Suspend to Disk is useless anyway because you would read in worst case more data than you would do with a normal boot when you memory is big and used.

[elanthis]

I highly doubt that somebody really needs kms.

And you're wrong. KMS is extremely important for suspend and hibernation, which is critical for laptop users. It's a huge boon for display hotplug. It's mandatory for developing alternative graphics stacks without duplicating a metric shitload of driver code.

KMS is way more interesting to me than DRI2 is. GEM interests me most of all, of course. Without it, neither DRI2 nor KMS could really work.

[Kano]

I highly doubt that somebody really needs kms. At least it does not matter for me if switching to a vt takes a few monents or if the default res is already the highest possible. Stability is much more important - also correct rendering and flickerfree videos/games when Vsync is enabled. The rest it nice to have, but not a requirement.

[fart_flower]

That's not my theory at all.

If that's the case, do you have an appropriate 3rd party licence?

It's fact that despite best intentions and planning thing don't always go as well as expected. Until actual implementation is actually out there and performing as well as expected it's pure speculation.

Geez... I was just being silly. No need to drive home an obvious point. I hope you didn't burst a vein coming up with your response.