Linux 6.3 To Remove Obsolete GPU Drivers: ATI Rage 128, 3Dfx, S3 Savage, i810 & More

[EphemeralEft]

A few years ago (maybe 4?) my mom had an active Unichrome computer running Arch, obviously with the latest kernel.

Your mom sounds cool.

[fitzie]

Matrox had great driver support. Before that I just used tseng et4000. Had a few matrox cards before ATI compatibility, and I've been ATI ever since. There was some dark days where you had to buy a 5 year old radeon, but these days ATI drivers are looking sharp. canadian graphics companies ftw.

[torsionbar28]

Ha! I've been using Linux so long, I remember waiting for drivers that let these chips work.

Right there with you. I remember there was a commercial X server vendor that worked with the GPU manufacturers to get support a lot earlier than XFree86. What was that outfit called? Metro-X or something like that? Would have been in the mid-1990's or thereabouts.

[mangeek]

Right there with you. I remember there was a commercial X server vendor that worked with the GPU manufacturers to get support a lot earlier than XFree86. What was that outfit called? Metro-X or something like that? Would have been in the mid-1990's or thereabouts.

Yep, Metro-X - https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2299

I didn't have $99 to spare though, was saving up for a 16MB DIMM.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Not particularly fussed one way or the other, but the article brought back fond memories of the Rage128, 3dfx Voodoo 1, 3 and 5 (I never had a Voodoo 2; was late to the party and my Voodoo 1 card was bought on sale from a high street retailer for about 10% of what it cost at launch.

I also really liked the FireGL cards, I had an 8800 at the time when everyone and their dog said ATi's Linux support was so bad you'd almost be better off not having a GPU... but I never had a problem with it. It managed every resolution and refresh rate my monitor could cope with, gave smooth 3D acceleration and was an absolute trooper for years before I decommissioned that box.

[rogerx]

What exactly is the benefit of deleting these old drivers? Since they weren't being actively maintained I assume they weren't taking up precious dev time so what adverse effect does their continued presence in the kernel have?

Creates a lot of fun with people complaining.

Also fun using the rm command with recursive force!

If people really want to hear a lot of complaining, target those using the PCI/AGP video capture cards, subsequently released after this bunch of video cards!

Personally, not a fan of cutting code for working drivers. On the flip, those using this very old code, will likely have no problems using an older kernel, as they're likely using the hardware for some brief exquisite purpose only. However, most of this hardware I owned from this time period, I have already given away to the Salvation Army, as there was no longer any usefulness.

Think those using the subsequent generation of video cards with analog video capture functions, are still definitely using the hardware to date for digitizing high quality VHS videos, as analog video capture devices for the past five plus years have significantly degraded with providing performance/quality captures, due to lack of TBC like features.

[partcyborg]

When it launched is not really relevant. What's the most recent implementation of this hardware? I know I have servers that are only a few years old, that have onboard Matrox MGA graphics. After all, the intel x86 architecture was introduced in 1978... we're way overdue for deprecating that, right?

This was already covered. That hardware uses the mga200 driver, not mga. Please actually search the thread before complaining next time.

[ntropy]

A sign that you are getting old, Linux kernel ejects the GPUs of your youth

[Slartifartblast]

What exactly is the benefit of deleting these old drivers? Since they weren't being actively maintained I assume they weren't taking up precious dev time so what adverse effect does their continued presence in the kernel have?

Hoarder mentality, a tidy house is one you can work in.

[caligula]

Think those using the subsequent generation of video cards with analog video capture functions, are still definitely using the hardware to date for digitizing high quality VHS videos, as analog video capture devices for the past five plus years have significantly degraded with providing performance/quality captures, due to lack of TBC like features.

People should really start digitizing the stuff before it's too late. I know few places where they had archives full of floppy disks. Unfortunately some of the disks had gone bad in storage, rodents had pissed on them and eaten corners of the plastic. In another storage 300 kilograms worth of old tapes were accidentally transported to landfill site during a relocation event. They also had computers with integrated 1.44 MB floppy drives until around 2015, but finally started digitizing old stuff a bit later and had to buy USB floppy drives. Again new problems arose as those drives didn't support the >1,7 MB formats on those disks because it required tuning of the drive electronics with bit banging 16-bit TSR code.

I've also digitized truckloads of old photos but that was years ago. Don't have a flatbed scanner anymore. I rented one of the most expensive flatbed film scanners and wanted to do it once and for all. You just have to do it some day. It makes no sense to archive these old media forever. I guess people don't remember the great fire when lots of old audio records masters got burned: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/m...ecordings.html