Three Years Later, FBDEV Drivers Still Active In The Linux Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Three Years Later, FBDEV Drivers Still Active In The Linux Kernel

Just over three years ago was a call by an open-source developer to deprecate the Linux kernel's FBDEV drivers. While more companies these days are investing more into DRM drivers, FBDEV drivers are still maintained by the latest Linux kernel releases...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FBDEV-Three-Years-No-Deprecate

[schmidtbag]

For some ARM devices, fbdev seems to be the only viable display option.

[willmore]

I'm with schmidtbag, how am I going to drive simple serial LCD dispalys on my little Pi and ODROID boards? FBdev works great for this. Not everything on Linux is a big desktop with a massive GPU with a dedicated framebuffer.

[StefanBruens]

dump framebuffer != fbdev

drm/kms is the right way to interface even to dump framebuffer devices. And there are dumb and less dumb framebuffer controllers. Some SoC integrated controllers have overlay planes (RGB, YUV), cursor planes, ... You can't use these with fbdev.

[gzed]

dump framebuffer != fbdev

drm/kms is the right way to interface even to dump framebuffer devices. And there are dumb and less dumb framebuffer controllers. Some SoC integrated controllers have overlay planes (RGB, YUV), cursor planes, ... You can't use these with fbdev.

+1

hopefully fbdev will retire soonish....