x-server will get some love on alpha

[Matt Turner]

Hi,

Yep, and Ivan's patch is now upsteam. Tobias keyworded 2.6.30-r3 on
Gentoo which includes it, so please test.

I've been playing around testing Radeon KMS, and the results differ
depending on whose tree I try. :\

Dave Airlie's drm-rawhide tree yields a nice fbcon, but X won't start.
Jerome Glisse's drm-next-radeon tree, which is what will eventually be
moved upstream fails to start. It actually hangs the system. We
couldn't isolate the problem, and there's too much churn in that code
now, so I'm waiting for it to quiet down before testing again.

Once this stuff is worked out, your blue backgrounded SRM console will
flash and immediately go to a nice kernel modeset framebuffer console.
X will start quickly without another flash, and you should have a nice
EXA accelerated, DRI2 desktop.

Of course, this requires a Radeon graphics card. If anyone else wants
to test, please contact me on this list or via IRC (#alpha on
Freenode).

To test, you'll need:
- glisse's drm-next-radeon kernel tree:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~glisse/drm-next/log/?h=drm-next-radeon

If modesetting works here, then you'll need these bits to make X work,
built in this order
- libdrm: modesetting-gem branch
- mesa: radeon-rewrite branch
- Newish xserver, 1.6.1 should work
- xf86-video-ati: glisse's radeon-gem-cs3 branch

PCI Radeons include:
- R600: 2400 Pro
- R500: X1300, X1550
- R200: lots, fastest is Radeon 9100

Of these, the X1550 is probably the fastest (yes, not the 2400).

So, please test and let's hear the results.

Thanks,

Matt Turner