Re: Removing old unmaintained X drivers
On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 04:32:05AM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Sat, 2013-09-28 at 10:16 -0500, Bob Tracy wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 02:29:05PM +0100, Jurij Smakov wrote:
> > > On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Julien Cristau <jcristau@debian.org>wrote:
> > > > (...)
> > > > xserver-xorg-video-sis
> > > > (...)
> >
> > The SiS chipset was, unfortunately, really popular with manufacturers of
> > relatively expensive micro PeeCees (EzGo, Jadetec, etc.), which were
> > essentially notebook hardware crammed into a small desktop case. Here's
> > a link with good pics: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/smallest,530-2.html
> > and see also http://www.snotmonkey.com/work/ezgo/ for detailed specs.
> > It's based on the P4, and I've got one of them. Case has the footprint
> > of a "shuttle", but is about half the height. If I *could* switch video
> > cards, I'd do it in a heartbeat because SiS video cards have given me nothing
> > but grief through the years.
> >
> > In the "unsolved wontfix" ubuntu bug list for the driver, mention is
> > made of the fact XAA support went bye-bye, and the attempted use of EXA
> > causes looping segfaults on X server startup. Only current workaround
> > is to disable acceleration. Truly a case of "bad breath is better than
> > no breath".
>
> This sounds like a good reason to remove it, unless both vesa and fbdev
> also fail on this hardware.
(k)ubuntu's "plymouth" can't figure out a supported mode for a graphical
boot, so I'm guessing vesa and fbdev fail worse than sis. Only way to
see anything besides a blank screen during boot is to tell grub not to
do the whole splash screen thing. Installs from scratch on this machine
are "interesting."
Don't save the SiS driver for one person, but know that I will miss it
for a select few machines, warts and all.
--Bob
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