xf86-video-ati-legacy port status

[Warner Losh]

On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 12:56 AM Andrea Venturoli <ml at netfence.it> wrote:

> On 2020-05-29 10:42, Niclas Zeising wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately it is very hard to fix it.  There has been several changes
> > in how xorg-server interacts with the xf86 drivers, and the version
> > xf86-video-ati-legacy was based on was very old and not compatible with
> > xserver 1.20.
> > If anyone can make xf86-video-ati-legacy work with xserver 1.20 we can
> > get the patches in, but I don't have the time to work on
> > xf86-video-ati-legacy myself.
>
> Agreed, but it's really the non-legacy version that should be fixed.
>

Yes. Another heroic fix isn't going to help the project in the long run.


> At a bare minimum, documentation should be updated to report what really
> works (not what should work but doesn't).
>

This list might be rather long, and ambiguous...


> As I said my integrated Radeon GPU does not work at all with new Xorg; I
> found another Radeon card laying around and tried that: it's better but
> still not there. Both are reported as "working" on the wiki.
>

That, at least, should be udated.


> Now, if I decided to go ahead and buy a new card, I wouldn't know what
> to buy: I could check the wiki, get a card which is listed there and
> discover I just wasted my money?
>

fair point. Something much newer should just work, but I understand your
hesitation.

BTW, I also have a laptop with CPU integrated Intel graphics: again,
> it's listed as just working, but I had to step through hops to avoid
> hangs and I still often get screen corruption.
> So even if I decided to change the whole box and get an Intel CPU, I'm
> not sure what to expect.
>

Yea. Most newer intel just work, though some with workarounds. Super-new
intel requires the latest drm-devel port and -current.

But honestly, when we have just volunteers doing all this, having a
specific, long list of what's know working and not is hard: it's hardware
intensive, labor intensive and requires a large capital investment for both
the gear, and a large operating cost to keep it powered, part of regression
tests, etc.

Warner