Re: Linux 2.1.69..

On Tue, Dec 02, 1997 at 01:23:35PM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >  Anyway, I personally don't see anything major pending. There are still
> > various fixes that have yet to be integrated (some of the smbfs work by
> > Bill etc), but on the whole I'd call this feature-freeze time. Have fun,
> 
> What about console generalization?
> 
> This is especially needed for graphical consoles. At the moment about each
> architecture that doesn't use VGA has it's own graphical console system. There
> are e.g. at least _three_ different drivers for the ATI Mach64, which is a
> waste.

I second that.  Geert's console code makes reasonable console speed for
certain type of GFX hardware like the Indy's newport hardware possible.
As it is now the newport character driver has to draw character by
character using a blitter engine; not exactly a fast thing that makes
a Indy console feel almost as bad as a Sparc 10 console under SunOS.

Another important feature is that the new console driver would bring us
a bit closer to a generic MIPS kernel.  Right now the console driver
enforces yet another kernel binary for almost every configuration.

  Ralf