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  • Mesa To Drop Support For Ancient Drivers

    Phoronix: Mesa To Drop Support For Ancient Drivers

    The fallout should be minimal and hopefully not impact any Phoronix readers, but as Mesa rolls into 2021 it is looking to drop support for loading DRI1 graphics drivers...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    I wonder if these kinds of things will become easier if Mesa had LTS releases?

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    • #3
      Okay, but since we have DRI3, when can DRI2 be dropped?
      Also is there any plans for any successor to DRI3? Maybe a DRI4?

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      • #4
        As long as the HW remains accessible and functional they can kick whatever they want. But before wildly kicking out stuff and cleaning codebases, there should be drivers in place to take over.
        Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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        • #5
          Wonder what my 12 year old media server (a Phenom II I think) is using.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Adarion View Post
            As long as the HW remains accessible and functional they can kick whatever they want. But before wildly kicking out stuff and cleaning codebases, there should be drivers in place to take over.
            Honestly, at this point they should just fork mesa into 2 releases, Legacy and Master and from Master they should remove the whole DRI, XA, mesa IR, drivers, etc etc. and keep the legacy release only for fixes for those with ancient hardware

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            • #7
              Originally posted by grigi View Post
              I wonder if these kinds of things will become easier if Mesa had LTS releases?
              Like stated in the article, only when used in conjunction with GLVND. And, IMHO, this would be something to go into a made-up mesa-legacy package, not mesa-lts.

              I don't really think that mesa-lts would be a good thing. Drivers and graphics are one of those things that just needs to be up to date and once the hardware gets to the point to where it isn't made, being used, or has drivers that are so old they get in the way of progress or add maintenance burden, it should be moved into legacy.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by jrch2k8 View Post

                Honestly, at this point they should just fork mesa into 2 releases, Legacy and Master and from Master they should remove the whole DRI, XA, mesa IR, drivers, etc etc. and keep the legacy release only for fixes for those with ancient hardware
                Heh. Beat me to it.

                And that's what I get for using the restroom mid post.

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                • #9
                  There is nothing wrong with this move. If you have a really ancient graphics card, you can just have multiple installations, use old Mesa, or take an effort to port the driver to more modern DRI. I think it is a good move. The code for older drivers is there, and it somebody really wants, they can be improved and resurrected.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by uid313 View Post
                    Okay, but since we have DRI3, when can DRI2 be dropped?
                    Also is there any plans for any successor to DRI3? Maybe a DRI4?
                    No plans for DRI4 because X11 is dying so there's no point to it.
                    DRI3 is X11-specific; you cannot 'use DRI2' or 'use DRI3' under Wayland. Mesa implements something which internally looks a bit like DRI3, and other drivers can do their own entirely different things.
                    -- Daniel Stone[1]

                    [1]

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