"panel-edp" Driver On Its Way To Linux 5.16 To Make For Less Hard-Coded eDP Panel Configs

The latest batch of miscellaneous Direct Rendering Manager changes are on their way to DRM-Next for Linux 5.16. Notable from this new drm-misc-next batch is the new "panel-edp" driver.

The panel-edp driver is focused on addressing the issue of right now most Embedded DisplayPort panels rely on hard-coded Device Tree files in the Linux kernel even though much of the information can be automatically probed. Most eDP panels are "99% probable" and this panel-edp driver effort works on that to make for more eDP panels to be probed dynamically at run-time rather than hard-coded.

This panel-edp driver is a step forward for cleaning up the situation but doesn't remove the existing hard-coded configurations from the kernel. So this is a nice step forward moving ahead and hopefully proves reliable enough that developers will rely less on the DT hard-coding for the panels.

The panel-edp driver was submitted to DRM-Next today as part of this pull request and will in turn premiere with Linux 5.16 in a few months.