Patches Resubmitted For Linux With Selectable Intel Graphics Platform Support

Back in early 2018 were patches proposed for selectable platform support when building Intel's kernel graphics driver so users/distributions if desired could disable extremely old hardware support and/or cater kernel builds for specific Intel graphics generations. Three years later those patches have been re-proposed.

The patches then and now are about allowing selectable Intel graphics "Gen" support at kernel configure/build time so that say the i8xx support could be removed or other specific generations of Intel graphics handled by the i915 kernel driver. This disabling could be done if phasing out older hardware support, seeking smaller kernel images, or other similar purposes. The patches don't change any default support levels but leaves things as-is and simply provides the knobs for disabling select generations of hardware.

Re-sending out these kernel patches were motivated due to the recent Intel kernel graphics driver work around preparing for the separation of Intel "Gen" GPU and display code with moving forward there is apparently going to be a more modular design to Intel graphics with varying graphics/display/media capabilities. Thus being able to selectively build the kernel support desired may be of greater interest as well as for coding decisions over separating of the different platform code.

This week the patches were re-sent out albeit not re-based against Linux Git. We'll see if there is enough interest to get it re-based and ultimately mainlined or will ultimately just serve as a historical artifact. Given that the i915 Intel kernel graphics driver supports from current hardware back through i830 era hardware, one has to wonder how long that i8xx support especially will be maintained before it is made optional or dropped outright.