VIA OpenChrome KMS Driver Finally Goes For Mainline

After years of work near single-handedly by James Simmons, the independently-created DRM kernel mode-setting driver for many VIA Chrome IGPs is finally looking for inclusion into the mainline kernel.

After being pegged by a user about the state of the VIA OpenChrome DRM KMS driver in the mainline Linux kernel, Simmons wrote a positive response on the mailing list.

The expressed reason before for not pushing his code to master was that Simmons was waiting for major distributions to carry the new OpenChrome X.Org driver that can support the KMS paths, rather than crashing and burning with an old DDX when running a KMS-enabled kernel. That package has been out there for a while now so it's no longer a reason to hold back on mainlining this code with a controversial past.

James Simmons has cleaned up his latest code quite well and now LVDS, HDMI, DVI, and VGA outputs should work for most VIA hardware with this KMS DRM kernel driver. However, Simmons reiterated that "by no means is the kernel driver complete but is usable."

He believes this code is now safe to be pushed into the mainline Linux kernel and has asked David Airlie, the DRM subsystem maintainer, how to proceed in getting this driver merged. It's possible now that we could see the VIA OpenChrome DRM KMS driver finally merged for the Linux 3.11 kernel.