Getting the Nouveau driver in Lenny and a half
Hello everybody,
I would like to talk about the possibility of an inclusion of the
Nouveau driver in Lenny and a half. In fact, I'm not really involved in
Debian, that just a wish from a Debian user (lenny).
So first, I would like to explain the problem I got with the current
situation. Actually, we only have the nv driver and the proprietary blob
driver. I don't want to use the blob, first because it's proprietary but
also because it lacks Xrandr support (that I need). The nv driver is
also not good enough because with that driver you can have XV support or
Xrandr support, not both : XV support include all cards up to G80
(excluded) and Xrandr support include all cards starting from G80. So
with the nv driver you will never get an NVidia card supporting both
XRandr and XVideo.
The only one driver that support both XRandr and XVideo on the majority
of the cards is the Nouveau driver (+ a better 2D acceleration than nv).
The big problem on the Debian part is the use of Xorg 7.3, because
Nouveau require Xorg 7.4 in order to compile (because of EXA interface
that are better in that version, faster).
So what are the options in order to get Nouveau in Lenny and a half
(from my pov) ?
1° Update Xorg to 7.4 and simply compile the futur Nouveau 2D only
driver release. I'm betting on this won't happen since an Xorg update
involved really a lot of changes, right ?
2° Adapt the nouveau code to support both Xorg 7.3 and newer (and so,
Nouveau would be able to get compile with the new EXA interface or the
old one with a 7.3 Xorg). It looks like the Nouveau Devs (or at least,
Younes Manton) are not opposed to this idea but we might code it our
self (I mean, they won't work on that so if we want it for Debian, we
have to code it). Of course, if we start in that way, we should start
talking with the nouveau devs and get our works in their trunk later.
So this email is more like a "call for help" for the option 2, but :
- Is it reasonable/feasible on the Debian pov ? (I mean, adding that
driver as a new package)
- Is there anybody interested in that work ? Currently, I'm a programmer
and I just get a big picture of the way Xorg works, I did never hack on
it so I probably won't be some kind of leader for that work.
Thanks for reading the whole mail and considering that problem.
Kind regards,
Henry-Nicolas Tourneur.
PS: I just sent that mail to the Xorg-debian ML, should I sent it to any
other one ?
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