Linux Seeing Kernel GPU Driver Support Two Decades Later For Matrox G200 Graphics Cards

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Seeing Kernel GPU Driver Support Two Decades Later For Matrox G200 Graphics Cards

The Matrox G200 series desktop graphics cards released in the late 90's are now seeing open-source DRM kernel driver support emerge in 2020...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Matrox-G200-DRM-Driver

[chuckula]

Don't get too excited, this entire driver will be deleted soon:

SUSE engineer Thomas Zimmermann has taken the time now to extend the MGAG200 DRM driver to actually support the G200 desktop chips.

MGAG200? That's practically.... MAGA 2020!

ENGAGE THE WOKENESS TRIGGER PROTOCOLS!!

This driver, all users of this driver, and all articles about it will now be canceled. All problems of repressed minorities will be solved by destroying this insensitive driver code.

[Pentarctagon]

Why though? This is the kind of stuff that should be removed, not added.

[kpedersen]

Why though? This is the kind of stuff that should be removed, not added.

https://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/pro...35796-00000001

Fairly standard servers still use it. Linux isn't just for consumer Steam games :/

This is also why Wayland / Gnome are still decades away from being acceptable alternatives to standard UNIX technology.

[Adarion]

Great to see some love given to those chips.
Those card were probably fairly good and can still be useful to re-purpose an elderly system if you don't want to be headless. Energy consumption should be low and (used) cards might be available for reasonable prices.

[CommunityMember]

Why though? This is the kind of stuff that should be removed, not added.

The chipset is used on some servers for basic VGA style functionality (it is low cost, with low power requirements), typically (for servers) used primarily for initial setup/install and, of course, recovery after something interesting happened.

[Pentarctagon]

https://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/pro...35796-00000001

Fairly standard servers still use it. Linux isn't just for consumer Steam games :/

This is also why Wayland / Gnome are still decades away from being acceptable alternatives to standard UNIX technology.

The article says it's a 20+ year old desktop GPU though, not the server chip.

This MGA G200 DRM driver though has just been focused on the numerous server motherboards having G200 chips for display purposes. The actual MGA G200 series desktop graphics cards have not worked with this Linux kernel driver, at least until now.

Also no idea why you decided to bring up wayland/gnome.

[L_A_G]

So, how long before someone demands it gets re-named because "MGA" is too close to "MAGA"? Because I'm pretty sure that if Trump wins this year's election that's going to be inevitable as people freak out over 4 more years of the orange man.

They've already sacrificed the concept of "master" and "slave" to make language less precise in the kernel space only to satisfy a few people's white savior complexes.

[stormcrow]

So, how long before someone demands it gets re-named because "MGA" is too close to "MAGA"? Because I'm pretty sure that if Trump wins this year's election that's going to be inevitable as people freak out over 4 more years of the orange man.

They've already sacrificed the concept of "master" and "slave" to make language less precise in the kernel space only to satisfy a few people's white savior complexes.

You people seriously need to find a different hobby horse. On both sides. Give. It. A. Rest.

[Zan Lynx]

I half expected this patch to come from John Carmack.

As I remember it, he updated and wrote a lot of the 3D acceleration code for the open source Matrox drivers in Linux. I used to run a Matrox G200 on my dual Pentium II 350 Linux machine. Wonderful video quality if you were using VGA. I was, at the time. A 19" CRT, 75Hz @ 1280x1024.

In Linux it ran Quake 3 faster than in Windows, since their Windows driver did some lame translation from OpenGL to DirectX. Plus, no doubt it helped having the same developer writing the game and the driver.