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Early Adopters Already Hit By Fedora Dropping Old Linux GPU Drivers

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  • #21
    Mostly that isn't related to KMS or something special, it's really basic: X.org removed XAA in version 1.13. So that old machines are stuck to, for example, Ubuntu 12.04. Xubuntu 12.04 has very soon no longer support (april next year). So I think, CentOS6 will be the last option. After that, that machines are screwed. Hopefully they break before :-(

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    • #22
      Originally posted by Gusar View Post
      You identified one problem right there, vesa doesn't provide Xv. With Xv you could still use the machine for video watching.

      Without Xv, fullscreen video playback is still possible, but scaling needs to be done in software in this case, taxing the CPU that already has its hands full with video decoding even more, so you might not be able to play videos that could be played if Xv was available.
      You're completely right, that was a problem with VESA. I'm sure there were others, but I just can't remember them. However, being realistic, I doubt many people with a 13-year-old GPU are watching videos... Still the VESA driver was more than capable to run a non-composited desktop.

      On the other hand, take into account that these GPUs will be installed on old systems (e.g. who uses an nvidia 2 or a SiS card with an AMD FX / Intel i7 CPU?). Many of these old systems will probably be suffering from other problems such as, for instance, no CPU PAE support (Ubuntu does not support those systems for some time) (my laptop sported a 1.1GHz P-III Coppermine and that does not have PAE support) or low RAM, which make them unsuitable for mainline modern distros. I know you can find distros which can run on low RAM, non-PAE systems, but let's be realistic, those systems are just getting too old. Adding support for them on generic distributions make other newer systems unoptimized (for instance, whenever a lib is compiled for i586, many newer instructions are not being taken advantage of). That's why sometimes a 64bit distro shows a better performance than its 32bit counterpart.

      So I guess a compromise must be achieved and at some time these systems should be left unsupported by the main distributions.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by jsa1983 View Post
        On the other hand, take into account that these GPUs will be installed on old systems (e.g. who uses an nvidia 2 or a SiS card with an AMD FX / Intel i7 CPU?). Many of these old systems will probably be suffering from other problems such as, for instance, no CPU PAE support (Ubuntu does not support those systems for some time) (my laptop sported a 1.1GHz P-III Coppermine and that does not have PAE support) or low RAM, which make them unsuitable for mainline modern distros.
        PAE has been around since 1995 and the Pentium Pro. From what I've read it was some motherboards that didnt expose it thats the problem.

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        • #24
          Fedora is considered a bleeding edge distro, so I honestly can't see what the problem is. Yes, some people use old hardware, but surely they don't need the latest and greatest software if they run old hardware.

          I installed Xubuntu 14.04 32-bit on an old Dell (Celeron 2Ghz, 40GB HDD, some ATI graphics card) that is used in an office environment (in London, UK) and response time of the desktop environment was measured in seconds. And the guy was still happy with it, and apparently it was much faster than the XP it had on it before.

          For people with old hardware, we have CentOS 6, which will be supported until 2020 and CentOS 7 until 2024. Also, if you start saving 6 pence a day, for the next 10 years, you can buy a brand new bottom-end PC (?219).

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          • #25
            Originally posted by lepetit View Post
            and for security flaw ? feature add ?
            If you've been running something 10+ years without a feature you almost certainly don't need it. As for security, the vesa drivers will always work if you *really* need to use the newest kernel/xorg with ancient hardware.

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            • #26
              GPU drivers from the likes of APM, Cirrus, Glint, i128, i740, Mach64, MGA, Neomagic, R128, Rendition, S3virge, Savage, SiliconMotion, SiS, Tdfx, and Trident.
              Memories! Sweet unforgettable memories.

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              • #27
                Originally posted by gotwig View Post
                You must be kidding. what has the one to do with the other.

                Before F21, I could boot my netbook just fine, now I need to boot in low graphics mode for some reason from the livecd, because else I get a kernel panic or something similar. But after I installed the system, I could drop low graphics mode... intel gma 950
                Also GNOME runs very poorly on this netbook... Better I switch back to windows xp :/ Or lxde. Is there a more lightweight browser than firefox... gtk webkit is so broken I dont even want to mention it.
                The GMA950 does not have shaders hardware, and the Intel official driver does not expose OpenGL 2, which is needed for both Gnome and the Fedora boot animation (I think). When you enable full graphics on Gnome, you are actually running in software (LLVMpipe).
                You might want to try the Intel Gallium driver, which is not official, but has support for GL2 and vastly improves the performance over software only... You can try to change to OpenGL 1 compositors like the ones in KDE and XFCE, too.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by tarceri View Post
                  PAE has been around since 1995 and the Pentium Pro. From what I've read it was some motherboards that didnt expose it thats the problem.
                  While that's possible, there are also some later CPU's that really don't have PAE. Most notably, Pentium M, once a very popular mobile processor ("Centrino" brand). All Pentium M Banias and Dothan series, except for Sonoma, don't have PAE.

                  I'm still supporting one of the Dothans by patching & recompilig a RHEL 6 non-PAE kernel every once in a while. It's in a nice 15.4" laptop with 1920x1200 resolution I intend to keep it running until it dies. The way it's been going, I'm just wondering what will come first, RHEL 6 EOL or it's demise...

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by jsa1983 View Post
                    However, being realistic, I doubt many people with a 13-year-old GPU are watching videos...
                    I would, on my old laptop with a Pentium4 2GHz CPU, SiS650 graphics and 512MB of RAM. The laptop is not in regular use anymore, but it can serve as a backup machine.

                    Originally posted by jsa1983 View Post
                    So I guess a compromise must be achieved and at some time these systems should be left unsupported by the main distributions.
                    I actually do agree with that, the Ubuntus and Fedoras can focus on new systems and provide big fancy DEs such as Gnome. There will always be distros where you install a simple window manager and a small set of light applications, and it'll run very well with 512 or even just 256MB of RAM (just don't open too many tabs when browsing the web ).


                    Originally posted by bibaheu View Post
                    The GMA950 does not have shaders hardware, and the Intel official driver does not expose OpenGL 2
                    It has pixel shader hardware (but no vertex shader hardware) and the official driver does expose OpenGL 2.1 nowadays. I have a netbook with a GMA950 so I could test how modern DEs work on this thing, but I'm too lazy to download an appropriate LiveUSB . The machine runs Arch with Openbox, but I recall running Compiz on it once, so Unity should work well.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by tarceri View Post
                      You obviously missed the article I pointed to before the site when down. Basically the guy loved his old laptop and was willing to go the extra mile to make sure it was still supported into the future. Its only fedora now but once the ball starts rolling its will be hard to stop.

                      I guess the other reason would be purely for interest and learning, people waste their time learning and coding less useful things all the time.
                      I read it at the time, but all references and my memory only say he talked about EXA. Not KMS. Certainly could be wrong given the years.

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