On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 15:58, Michael Schmitz wrote:
> > > > possible as modules. The idea was to build only offb into the kernel,
> > > > and load the accelerated framebuffers as modules if desired.
> > > > Unfortunately, this didn't work out for radeonfb, aty128fb and atyfb,
> > > > and I am still testing rivafb but strongly suspect it is not going to
> > > > work as a module either.
> > >
> > > Yes, unfortunately, IDE and fbdev's arent" good module citizens at this
> > > point. This will get better over time (read 2.7 :)
> >
> > Only for powerpc, or in general?
>
> In general, though it's made worse on ppc for various reasons
>
> > Maybe you need at least one full featured fbdev built in, and offb just
> > doesn't qualify (no way to give up virtual consoles)?
>
> There is no proper giveup mecanism between offb and another fbdev
Indeed. Both offb and the chip-specific drivers use request_mem_region() and
friends to claim the graphics chipset, first come, first serve.
Since offb is at the end of the probe chain, it works fine as a fallback.
But currently there's no way to replace offb by a chip-specific driver later.
Ia32 has the same problem with vesafb (although vesafb seems to override all
other claims :-(
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
