Re: [gentoo-kernel] push kernel bugs upstream sooner and bootsplash/vesa-ng stuff

[Michal Januszewski <spock@gentoo.org>]

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On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 08:46:58AM +0100, Daniel Drake wrote:

> Michal can provide you with clearer answers but here is what I know:
> 
> fbsplash was submitted about a year ago. Some developers commented "do
> it in userspace, you can do almost all of that there", and others gave
> feedback on things which must be changed or fixed before it is to be
> considered. I don't think Michal has had time to finish addressing those 
> points -- when are you going to get SuSE to hire him? :)

I'm sorry this reply is so terribly delayed, but I have been away at the
time this message was sent. What Daniel said above is true. I didn't
really have time to address or dispute all these issues (I'm not sure
all of them were fixable).

What's more, I don't think it is possible to get fbsplash merged at this
point. Currently, the predominant vision for a themed console, with
bell'n'whistles and stuff, is to do it completely in userspace (see
the rather lengthy 'OpenGL-based framebuffer concepts' discussion [lkml,
June 2006]). The idea is to do fbcon in userspace and keep only a very
simple console driver in the kernel (for things such as printing
oopses). Obviously, having the console completely in userspace makes
it possible to do virtually anything with it -- the possibilities are
by no means limited by just setting background images.

I have to say I like this idea of a userspace console and plan to work
on it after I'm finished with all the old stuff I'm stuck with right
now.
 
> I don't think fbsplash is too far away from possible kernel inclusion,
> but vesafb-tng is. It is x86-only and is a big hack by design. Here's a
> recent comment from Michal:
> 
> >Wrt the future of vesafb-tng -- it's unlikely any code can be moved
> >to vesafb. The way to go (and this seems to be both my own opinion
> >and the opinion of the fb developers) is to have the vm86 code
> >separated into an userspace application (which will also make it
> >possible for the driver to work on non-x86, since x86emu can be used
> >in place of vm86). I'm going to work on this during the summer, but I
> >wouldn't want to set any deadlines or promise completion dates just
> >yet :)

The quote says it all :)

Best regards.
-- 
Michal Januszewski                              JID: spock@im.gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux Developer                    http://people.gentoo.org/spock


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