Final Maverick i830, i845g, i855 support

[Leann Ogasawara]

On Tue, 2010-09-14 at 09:19 -0700, Leann Ogasawara wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-09-13 at 11:20 +1000, Christopher James Halse Rogers wrote:
> > Hello again!
> > 
> > For Lucid we asked the kernel team to blacklist KMS on i830, i845 & i855
> > to try to work around the instability in the intel drivers on those
> > cards.
> > 
> > This instability (while, apparently, slightly reduced by the 2.12 DDX)
> > is still present in Maverick, so I asked the kernel team to re-enable
> > the blacklist in a recent upload.
> > 
> > Since we've got the 2.12 DDX with no userspace modesetting support, that
> > means that these chips should get vesa.  There's an issue¹ with X
> > actually loading vesa rather than fbdev or intel which I need to
> > investigate which is preventing this from happening now.
> > 
> > The other option for these cards is to use KMS + the fbdev driver².
> > 
> > There have been a couple of concerns raised about vesa:
> >  * Possibly less capable of proper suspend/resume than KMS.
> >  * Won't drive the display in the native mode for laptops with a
> > poorly-written video bios.
> > 
> > fbdev+KMS will work where ever KMS works, and will set the native mode
> > where ever KMS sets the native mode.  It is not capable of changing
> > resolution, however.
> > 
> > I've been persuaded that fbdev+KMS will provide a better experience for
> > more people than kms-blacklist+vesa.  This is a final call for comment
> > before I ask the kernel team to revert the blacklist for these cards and
> > flick the switch in xorg-server to use fbdev rather than intel.
> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> Just wanted to get your final recommendation if we, the Ubuntu kernel
> team, should revert the KMS disablement patches.  Let us know asap, as
> we hit Kernel Freeze this Thurs, Sept 16.

Given our time constraints to make Kernel Freeze, I've reverted the KMS
disablement patches in the Ubuntu kernel for Maverick per the following
conversation in #ubuntu-kernel on FreeNode:

<ogasawara> has anyone seen RAOF about?
<vanhoof> Sarvatt: ^^
<Sarvatt> RAOF is at the X developers summit
<ogasawara> Sarvatt: maybe you can answer my question then... I need to know if we need to drop those KMS disablement patches from the kernel.
<Sarvatt> yeah, we've already switched the server to use fbdev
<ogasawara> Sarvatt: ok cool, I'll drop the patches then.  thanks.
<Sarvatt> well, xserver with the change isn't uploaded yet, he didn't find a sponsor before he had to get on the plane
<Sarvatt> but he does intend for those to go away yeah
<apw> Sarvatt, if we don't drop them today and upload them they won't make the release ...
<apw> kernel freeze is tommorrow
* Sarvatt nods

Thanks,
Leann

> > ¹: Bug #633593:
> > https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/633593
> > ²: This is similar in some respects to the upstream “Shadow branch”
> > work.
> 
> 
>