Latest Linux 5.17 Graphics Drivers: "Every Single Patchset In This PR Is Awesome"

Already a lot of DRM display/graphics driver changes have been queued into DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.17 merge window while now is the latest weekly batch of drm-misc-next material. DRM-Misc maintainer Thomas Zimmermann of SUSE commented, "every single patchset in this [pull request] is awesome."

This drm-misc-next pull request sent out today follows other exciting improvements to be queued recently too for Linux 5.17, including initial Raptor Lake S graphics support, Alder Lake P is now stable, various AMDGPU improvements, variable rate refresh (VRR) for Intel Ice Lake graphics, DRM privacy screen support, Broadcom VC4 4K@60 support for that driver used by the latest Raspberry Pi boards, and much more.

So what is so "awesome" with this latest batch of drm-misc-next changes? Highlights include:

- The VMWGFX DRM driver for supporting VMware SVGA graphics for 3D-accelerated VMware guest VMs now has support for OpenGL 4.3. The kernel-side changes for OpenGL 4.3 are landing in Linux 5.17 and there are also the Mesa VMware patches ready to go too. VMWGFX has also added GEM memory management support too.

- SimpleDRM has added support for the Apple M1 firmware frame-buffers. This is just about simple frame-buffer support and not yet any 3D hardware acceleration or any other major features for the Apple M1 graphics processor, but at least the display support is coming about.

- The Broadcom VC4 driver adds 10-bit YUV output support.

- The SPRD driver code is added for supporting Unisoc display hardware.

The full list of patches part of this drm-misc-next pull request can be found on dri-devel. The Linux 5.17 merge window should be opening up after the holidays in January and in turn should see its stable debut by the end of March.