Re: 2.5.68 state of matroxfb

Re: 2.5.68 state of matroxfb

[Petr Vandrovec]

On 22 Apr 03 at 20:24, rwhron@earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> Perhaps it's easier for Petr to maintain matroxfb outside Linus' tree
> at the moment.  I'm glad he keeps putting his patches up.  

I'll try to put stripped down matroxfb into kernel sometime in future...
Unfortunately as 2.5.x fbdev infrastructure does not fullfill my needs,
it will be stripped down version (which fits into current fbdev, and
which will not support text mode & fbset -fb /dev/tty*), and I'll not 
test it a lot, as it is hard to test something you cannot use in daily 
work...
                                            Best regards,
                                                Petr Vandrovec
                                                vandrove@vc.cvut.cz
                                                

Re: 2.5.68 state of matroxfb

[rwhron]

I've been using the matroxfb drivers at
ftp://platan.vc.cvut.cz/pub/linux/matrox-latest/
for the last 3 months with good luck. (G400, single monitor, 
using text console and X).

Linux rushmore 2.5.68-mm1 #1 Sun Apr 20 19:45:04 EDT 2003 i686 unknown

Besides the other 2.5.x changes for video/console
documented by davej at http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.txt
matroxfb wants "matroxfb" in the boot string, rather than "matrox".

My current append directive for lilo includes:
video=matroxfb:vesa:depth:32,fh:115,fv:92,xres:1920,yres:1440,left:392,right:124
But don't use that string, as most monitors cannot handle it.  It happens to be
for a ViewSonic PF815.  (other than "fb" in "matroxfb", the same string 
is what I was using with 2.4.x).

Perhaps it's easier for Petr to maintain matroxfb outside Linus' tree
at the moment.  I'm glad he keeps putting his patches up.  
-- 
Randy Hron
http://home.earthlink.net/~rwhron/kernel/bigbox.html

Re: 2.5.68 state of matroxfb

[Matt Reppert]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 16:53:02 -0400
Ed Sweetman <ed.sweetman@wmich.edu> wrote:

> I'm just wondering what the state of the matroxfb driver is and why it's 
> an option in the kernel when it's completely uncompilable and has been 
> for many months.

Easy. A lot of FB stuff has been nonworking at various stages, since the
whole console layer has been more or less rewritten over the course of 2.5.
(Of course, a lot of kernel internals have changed, so entire *CPU architectures*
have been uncompilable for significant periods of time.)

> I know it requires patches to work and i was under the 
> assumption that these patches were at linux-fbdev.org but that site has 
> been down for the past few days i've tried to access it and with no 
> documentation updates about the new matroxfb driver since 2.4, I've been 
> unable to verify if this is the only place to find the matroxfb patches. 

A search of message archives via groups.google.com yields this site quite
quickly:
ftp://platan.vc.cvut.cz/pub/linux/matrox-latest

Please also read this message from two days ago:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=matroxfb+group:fa.linux.kernel&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=9&as_miny=2002&as_maxd=22&as_maxm=4&as_maxy=2003&selm=fa.eu6ulqe.4l2eo4%40ifi.uio.no&rnum=6

>   So what i'm getting at is why is there a matroxfb option in the 
> current kernel when the driver isn't there and what the future/current 
> situation is with the framebuffer driver.

Because, it seems, support is planned but there hasn't been time to get all the
issues hammered out. (A lot of kernel devs still are volunteers that have to do
this in whatever free time they have, between actual jobs or, sometimes more
importantly, between searching for jobs, so things don't always happen instantly.)

You might be able to get a feel for the future/current situation of the fb
code if you had a read through your favorite lkml archive, if you're not
subscribed. It looks like the questions or doubts you bring up in this mail
would be answered by doing so.

Matt

2.5.68 state of matroxfb

[Ed Sweetman]

I'm just wondering what the state of the matroxfb driver is and why it's 
an option in the kernel when it's completely uncompilable and has been 
for many months. I know it requires patches to work and i was under the 
assumption that these patches were at linux-fbdev.org but that site has 
been down for the past few days i've tried to access it and with no 
documentation updates about the new matroxfb driver since 2.4, I've been 
unable to verify if this is the only place to find the matroxfb patches. 
  So what i'm getting at is why is there a matroxfb option in the 
current kernel when the driver isn't there and what the future/current 
situation is with the framebuffer driver. I'd like to get the most 
hardware support for video output as possible and it seems like the mga 
(mplayer)  driver built on top of the fb driver is the way to do that 
and since my Nvidia card is twice as fast at X operations as my G450, I 
was assuming that the 2.5 fb code was just much better than the 2.4 fb 
code since I use the nvidia fb driver in 2.5 with X using the nvidia 
driver (Xfree's ). I've never been able to test that theory though 
because i've never been able to build 2.5's matroxfb.