[ubuntu-x] ANN: Kernel Mode-Setting for Intel Graphics

[Bryce Harrington]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 02:38:41AM +0200, Sjors Gielen wrote:
> > What about ATI and Nvidia owners?  Kernel mode-setting for the -ati open
> > source driver is currently in progress, and is available in PPAs for
> > technically brave users to try out.  For other hardware and other
> > drivers, we're still waiting on upstream development to mature further,
> > and providing what help where we can.
> 
> However, in this piece, you ask the question "What about ATI and NVidia
> owners?" - You're answering it shortly for ATI, and then generally for
> all others. I've done my bit of reading on KMS, and found out Nouveau, I
> think a fork of the FOSS NVidia 'nv' driver, will be used by default in
> Fedora 11, and it also supports kernel mode-setting. Will Nouveau be set
> as the default in Karmic, or will you wait, as you say, "on upstream
> development to mature further"? Is there anything you can say about this?

Yes, we've been playing with KMS with -nouveau and have the requisite
bits in PPAs, but we've not had the degree of success as with -ati.

Also, -ati and -nouveau are developed on separate branches, which are
not compatible enough to be merged with each other at the moment.  As
things mature upstream, this will be less of a problem.

Aside from that, KMS is also available only for a subset of nvidia
hardware.  Older chipsets are still WIP.

Regarding switching to -nouveau as default... I'd love to do this, but
if we're going to be aggressive with getting KMS on -nouveau it may be
causing a lot of instabilities anyway, so probably wisest to wait until
KMS is solid first.  I'd also like to see a lot more people running
-nouveau successfully before we switch to it as the default.

A lot of this is largely driven by volunteers, and so even just a few
really active new community people to help test and to forward bugs
upstream could accelerate progress and shift our strategy considerably.
If you're interested in lending a hand and aren't afraid of patching and
building X bits and the kernel, join the ubuntu-x@ mailing list and pop
into #ubuntu-x on FreeNode.  We've got a friendly little community
working on all this stuff, but would love to welcome more to the
ubuntu-x team.

Bryce