Self-appointed OpenChrome project maintainer Kevin Brace who for the past year or so has been single-handedly managing the open-source VIA "OpenChrome" graphics driver code-base, is still working towards getting the work-in-progress Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver working on newer builds of the Linux kernel.

Brace has been working on getting the OpenChrome DRM driver working off the drm-next 4.13 kernel. He's worked through some compiler issues, but the code itself is still broken and the X.Org Server cannot start due to GEM/TTM memory management issues but at least a frame-buffer console will work.

Meanwhile, he's also still maintaining a Linux 3.19 based branch for the OpenChrome driver for now, but intends to abandon that at some point in the future in order to favor the newer kernel cycles.

At this stage he has no firm timetable for when he thinks the OpenChrome DRM code would be ready for merging into the mainline Linux kernel. He does also acknowledge the situation is getting tougher for VIA x86 Linux users with more distributions trying to weed out non-PAE 32-bit support or even doing away with their i686 kernel support entirely.

Those curious about the state of this unofficial VIA x86 Linux graphics driver can find the newest details via the OpenChrome mailing list.