Oracle Solaris At Least Has Intel KMS/DRI2

[indezign]

No full Sandy Bridge support today...

No Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge support on Oracle Solaris 11 - it is kaput'a for now.

[alanc]

Just because you don't know doesn't mean it's a secret

While you can't see the kernel developments as they happen any more, most of the packaging/patching of externally-created open source bundled into Solaris is still being done in the open on OpenSolaris.org. For instance, if you had wanted to keep up on what we're doing with X11 & Mesa sources, you could check the changelogs (though sadly the bug links for more info don't work), browse the source, watch the commit notification list, or participate in the discussion list. From any of those you could see we're shipping xf86-video-intel versions that require KMS support and fairly recent versions of libdrm & libkms.

The OpenIndiana distro folks, who use these still open-source bits from us, along with the illumos fork of the OpenSolaris kernel have certainly been aware for many months that the Xorg driver for intel graphics in our X11 stack requires KMS support in the kernel that they don't have yet, but have thought about as a possible project.

[AnonymousCoward]

It's like buying a BMW and then complaining that the manufacturer requires you to run it on gasoline for best performance.

That must be the dumbest analogy I've heard in a long time.

[vermaden]

Been getting alot of email lately at work about "Solaris 11 training etc." I reckon Solaris 11 will launch sometime in Q3 probably with the Sparc T4 box.

Solaris 11 launch date is (20)11/11/11 ... probably at 11:11.11

[Dubhthach]

GEM has been in Solaris codebase since 2009. See the ARC casefiles from 2009

http://arc.opensolaris.org/caselog/PSARC/2009/425/

From looking at Nvidia site Oracle are obviously still paying as the Nvidia Solaris driver is at same version number as Linux one.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Been getting alot of email lately at work about "Solaris 11 training etc." I reckon Solaris 11 will launch sometime in Q3 probably with the Sparc T4 box.

[vermaden]

FreeBSD also has almost fninished/ported the KMS/GEM, more details here: http://wiki.freebsd.org/Intel_GPU

... and DragonflyBSD ports that from FreeBSD also.

[bridgman]

Ahh, so not talking about Solaris...

Carry on

[frantaylor]

This puzzled me a bit. What are you waiting for AMD to do w.r.t. drivers on Solaris ? There are working open source drivers out there today, what they need is a Solaris-compatible implementation of the OS-specific bits in the open source kernel driver.

Are you suggesting that for some reason only AMD can port the open source code to Solaris ?

Not at all.

I was responding to "If I hear one more thing about open source graphics drivers I think I'm going to throw up all over my keyboard."

We are going to hear about open source graphics drivers more and more as Intel's implementation becomes more stable.

And if I decide to run the Catalyst driver for whatever reason, then yes I do need to wait for them to fix the bugs.

[bridgman]

Those of us stuck with Nvidia or AMD products have to wait for the vendor to get around to our problems.

This puzzled me a bit. What are you waiting for AMD to do w.r.t. drivers on Solaris ? There are working open source drivers out there today, what they need is a Solaris-compatible implementation of the OS-specific bits in the open source kernel driver.

Are you suggesting that for some reason only AMD can port the open source code to Solaris ?

[frantaylor]

If I hear one more thing about open source graphics drivers I think I'm going to throw up all over my keyboard.

It has moved way beyond obsession at this point.

It's like buying a BMW and then complaining that the manufacturer requires you to run it on gasoline for best performance.

If you go away and stop reading the articles, then you will not suffer from this problem any more.

Or perhaps you might want to look into purchasing a waterproof keyboard.

Or maybe you can look at what Intel is doing, they are developing a fine alternative to Nvidia and AMD. It's certainly not done, but they are surprisingly close to having a competitive product, and they don't have the obsessive desire to hide what they are doing. And besides, they can enlist the help of the community to find and fix bugs for them. Those of us stuck with Nvidia or AMD products have to wait for the vendor to get around to our problems.