Linux 5.10 To Bring Support For Matrox G200 Desktop Graphics Cards

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.10 To Bring Support For Matrox G200 Desktop Graphics Cards

Sporting AGP, fabbed on a 350nm process, making use of a 64-bit memory interface, and clocking to nearly 100MHz, the Matrox G200 desktop graphics cards are set to see mainline open-source support come Linux 5.10...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.10-Matrox-G200

[c117152]

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AGP-Radeon-Nouveau-Drop-RFC

[rene]

It is not "new" support, the support was always there. Heck I used it when my Matrox Millennium II was new or my G200 and even played Quake3 Linux steel box edition when it was new: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOfcpNW01d4 this is "only" moving support glue code around to newer APIs.

[alpha_one_x86]

AMD Geode LX remain without KMS: https://www.x.org/wiki/GeodeDriver/

[milkylainen]

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...uveau-Drop-RFC

AGP is still a PCI card. This was not removing support for AGP cards.
This was about removing some memory mapping stuff used for acceleration by AGP cards (afaik).
Using an AGP card as SVGA/VESA display out in a server or something should work just fine.

[jabl]

AGP is still a PCI card. This was not removing support for AGP cards.
This was about removing some memory mapping stuff used for acceleration by AGP cards (afaik).
Using an AGP card as SVGA/VESA display out in a server or something should work just fine.

Yes, IIUIC it was removing support for an address mapping engine in the AGP support chip on the motherboard. Even after this removal AGP cards can be used as a "normal" PCI card, even taking advantage of the higher BW AGP provides.

[jabl]

It is not "new" support, the support was always there. Heck I used it when my Matrox Millennium II was new or my G200 and even played Quake3 Linux steel box edition when it was new: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOfcpNW01d4 this is "only" moving support glue code around to newer APIs.

Yes, I used a Matrox Millenium card with Linux back in the day as well. Don't recall the exact version, maybe it was a G400. But it was using the user-space modesetting code just like every other graphics driver was doing back then. This patch apparently adds kernel modesetting support for G200, which is what other modern graphics drivers are using.

[c117152]

AGP is still a PCI card. This was not removing support for AGP cards.
This was about removing some memory mapping stuff used for acceleration by AGP cards (afaik).
Using an AGP card as SVGA/VESA display out in a server or something should work just fine.

It's just context to explain the "new" driver isn't accelerated or anything but rather just extends the server g200 driver coverage to substitute for the stuff that was / will be removed from the AGP stack to provide basic video out.

Personally I can't begin to remember when was the last time I've see this sort of hardware in use...

[torsionbar28]

Personally I can't begin to remember when was the last time I've see this sort of hardware in use...

Someone is using it, and clearly someone has enough of an interest in it to have performed this new work. The oft cited reason for removing older hardware support is the lack of a willing maintainer. It's quite refreshing in this case to see someone step up and perform modernization and maintenance on this older driver code.

[kpedersen]

Personally I can't begin to remember when was the last time I've see this sort of hardware in use...

Have a browse through some recent server hardware. Matrox GPUs are still fairly common.