From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <414EE34A.70507@9fs.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 15:03:54 +0100
From: Nigel Roles <nigel@9fs.org>
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To: Vester Thacker <vester.thacker@gmail.com>,
	Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Generic Plan 9 to Linux video api shim.
References: <32a656c2040920043066bdbefe@mail.gmail.com>	<414ED4A9.3090404@9fs.org>
	<32a656c204092006454496b56d@mail.gmail.com>
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Vester Thacker wrote:

>I believe my friend was refering along the lines of creating an
>abstraction layer that would allow for linux graphic drivers to be
>used with Plan 9. I could be mistaken.
>
>If so, I'm not necessarily advocating that idea. It is apparent that
>Plan 9 lacks support for many video cards. I suppose what my friend is
> really saying to me is that there has to be an easier way to provide
>graphic driver support.
>
>My friend is an Economist, so his thinking might go along the lines of
>doing something with the least effort and producing maximum gain.  I
>apologize if this obfuscates the earlier question.
>
>--Vester "Vic" Thacker
>
>  
>
Well, then my answer was reasonably accurate. The only pure Linux drivers
for video cards are those that are part of the framebuffer driver. These 
have
better coverage than Plan 9 but, interestingly, exhibit the same issues 
as Plan 9
drivers: they tend only to work for the cards that the developers had to 
hand,
as vga documentation is either unavailable, or moderately misleading. As 
soon
as the manufacturers obselete one card, and introduce another, the driver is
close to useless.

I'm told that the linux-fb matrox drivers are not too bad, but then 
again that's true for
Plan 9, because the manufacturer provides goodish documentation.

So in reality Linux users use XFree86/X.Org drivers which are not part of
Linux, as they work a lot better.

Writing a 'shim' for XFree86 is a major undertaking. I've considered it, and
I expect other have too.