Open-Source VIA DRM/KMS Driver "OpenChrome" Not Ready For Merging Into Linux 5.20
The OpenChrome DRM/KMS driver hasn't been queued yet into the DRM-Next tree for the Linux 5.20 merge window. The latest activity on dri-devel as of this weekend indicates at least another revision to the patch series is still needed to address open issues raised during the current "v3" round of review. Those open items need to be addressed before the code would be merged.
Sometimes with new drivers they are sent in late in the merge window since they don't really run the risk of regressing current users, etc. So there are still chances something like that could happen, but more than likely the OpenChrome driver will be pushed back at least another cycle.
The OpenChrome project continues working on open-source driver support for integrated graphics with old VIA x86 chipsets.
This OpenChrome DRM/KMS driver is designed to work with the VIA CLE266 / KM400 / K8M800 / P4M800 Pro / PM800 / P4M890 / K8M890 / P4M900 / CX700 / VX800 / VX855 / VX900 chipsets and has been in development now for more than a decade, albeit on and off with Kevin Brace being the last developer involved in pushing forward open-source VIA x86 graphics driver support. But even in its current state for 2022, this OpenChrome driver doesn't yet have any 2D or 3D hardware acceleration support so is basically good enough for kernel mode-setting / display purposes.
When the driver is eventually merged, the plan is to treat it as "experimental" at least until 2D acceleration is implemented and thus will only be loaded by default if the "via.modeset=1" kernel option is passed.
7 Comments
