Open-Source VIA DRM/KMS Driver "OpenChrome" Not Ready For Merging Into Linux 5.20

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Open-Source VIA DRM/KMS Driver "OpenChrome" Not Ready For Merging Into Linux 5.20

You may recall a month ago the lone developer still working on open-source VIA x86 graphics support for Linux hoped to finally mainline this "OpenChrome" DRM/KMS driver for the Linux 5.20 cycle. Well, Linux 5.19 is being released today and that opens up the Linux 5.20 merge window but still the OpenChrome DRM driver isn't ready to go yet...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/OpenChrome-Not-Ready-Yet-5.20

[Quackdoc]

well, at least I doubt very many people are in a rush for it

[Developer12]

Would be nice to at least get basic display on these boards, considering they found a lot of use in certain areas.

[gnarlin]

Can't VIA release some documentation for it since it's so obsolete now to help that solo developer out?

[DanL]

Can't VIA release some documentation for it since it's so obsolete now to help that solo developer out?

Unlikely. VIA's x86 team has already been poached by Intel and the remainder is focused on new products for the Chinese market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin

[libv]

Would be nice to at least get basic display on these boards, considering they found a lot of use in certain areas.

This is what i wrote about the unichrome driver in 2005, 17 years ago: "Sure, this driver currently doesn't have a few glittery bits, but ask yourself: what use are they if you are unable to display them in the first place? Will you still care about those a year or two from now? If an X developer, 10 years from now, passes over this driver to adjust it to X-side changes, what will he think about those glittery bits and will they survive?"

I wrote this as a reaction to Openchrome forking away because i refused to let VBE modesetting, and thus a secondary codepath for display back into the codebase. Modesetting sadly never went anywhere though, and today we are still basking in the glow of the XvMC2 protocol with MPEG2 decoding support, and the amazing assembler based cpu specific copy functions.

Oh wait...

[libv]

Can't VIA release some documentation for it since it's so obsolete now to help that solo developer out?

First off, openBSD folks liberated some docs back in 2005. To this day i am 100% convinced that the leader of that community has been actually useful, compared to what most people see as the religious leader of the GNU movement, as that guy is just a waste of time.

Secondly, after we at SuSE convinced AMD with the RadeonHD project to release documentation, both intel and VIA went and copied our move. With VIA it was just a one time thing though. AMD lost the internal struggle with ATI and stopped docs at the same time the RadeonHD project stopped. Intel went at least a decade further.

[libv]

well, at least I doubt very many people are in a rush for it

If the hw has not died due to bad caps, or due to the processor burning out (VIA never was as efficient as they claimed, but they liked to reduce cooling, so processors generally ran hot), then the hw has mostly just aged badly.

The pre-nehemiah C3 was unable to run i686 code. And it took until 2008 until VIA shipped some x86-64 chips. This was the era of the intel Atom, and netbooks, and VIA based machines were the most crappy badly supported ones out there (and i know, i own quite a few of them).

VIA had a tiny window in the 2001-2006 era. When both intel and AMD processors used third party chipsets (SiS, VIA, nvidia and ati -- ali was already long gone by then). And before intel launched the Atom and VIA epias were useful small machines. VIA barely generated return buyers though with their bad software support.

So no-one sensible has bought this hw in 15 years. And VIA has not been making new chip designs in 11 years.