Fedora 12 Graphics Issues: Cancel F13 and concentrate on fixing F12 ?

[Dave Airlie]

> Yes, some graphics boards I am sure work well, although 3D should really
> be working on all cards in 2009 ...
> But this is the point, there are a lot of different graphics boards, and
> so a much wider scope for the testing is required here which requires more
> users over more time with many different applications using basically the
> same software.

Why do you think 3D should be working in 2009 as opposed to any previous
years btw? I'm interested in the logic that leads to this point.

GPUs have gotten more and more complex every 6 months for about 8 years
now. A current radeonhd 4000 series bears little resemblence to the
radeon r100 that was out then. The newer GPUs require a full complier to
be written for an instruction set more complex than x86 in some places.
The newer GPUs get more and more varied modesetting combos that all
require supporting.

Now I'd would guess (educated slightly) that the amount of code required
to write a full driver stack for a modern GPU has probably gone up
40-50x what used to be required, whereas the number of open source
community developers has probably doubled since 2001. Also newer GPU
designs have forced us to redesign the Linux GPU architecture, this
had to happen in parallel with all the other stuff, again with similiar
number of developers. So yes it sucks but it should point out why 
there is no reason why 3D should really be working on all cards.

Dave.