I took the action item in our weekly meeting to track down what's going on with the Gfx driver and libexa. Here is what I found out...
The latest version of the PSB Gfx driver requires that libexa be at v2.2 to support 2-D acceleration. PSB Gfx driver will still work on a system w/ libexa v2.1, but without 2-D acceleration. The problem is that the version of libexa in Gutsy's xorg-xserver-core-1.3 package is v2.1. The developers working on the PSB Gfx driver get around this issue by copying over the version of libexa that the xorg-xserver-core package installs with libexa v2.2. This works for the PSB Gfx driver only and is a hack. It would seem like a better solution would be to update the xorg-xserver-core package to build and install libexa v2.2. The problem with that is that you would need to port and validate all the other X display drivers and other components that have a dependency on libexa. I would expect that to be a lot of work with little gain when we move to Hardy. On Hardy xorg is based on 1.4 and installs v2.2 of libexa. That would seem ideal. Unfortunately the PSB Gfx driver hasn't been developed nor validated against xorg 1.4. It has been developed and validated against xorg 1.3. At this time we're not able to move to xorg 1.4 and will have to investigate for the switch to Hardy. Summary of supported versions: ============================= PSB Gfx driver requirement: libexa v2.2 Base | xorg | xorg-xserver-core | libexa ========+======+===================+======== Intel | 1.3 | 1.3 | 2.2 --------+------+-------------------+-------- Gutsy | 1.3 | 1.3 | 2.1 --------+------+-------------------+-------- Hardy | 1.4 | 1.4 | 2.2 --------+------+-------------------+-------- Proposal 1: ========== For the interim period, while we're on the Ubuntu Mobile PPA code base that is based on Gutsy, we could have the deb package containing the PSB Gfx driver copy over the libexa with v2.2 when it is installed. This way libexa 2.2 would only clobber the previously installed libexa if the PSB Gfx driver is installed. When we move to Hardy, the PSB Gfx driver would be ported to xorg 1.4 and the need for the libexa hack would go away. Proposal 2: ========== Another idea is to live without 2D acceleration until we switch to Hardy and we move the PSB Gfx driver to xorg 1.4. This is not very desirable from Intel's perspective, because we can't get any test coverage or performance tuning on the driver until we switch to Hardy. I'm leaning towards proposal 1, even though it's far from ideal. Comments? Suggestions? Other ideas? +=+=+ Rob Rhoads mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Software Architect Open Source Technology Center Office: 503-712-6675 Software Solutions Group mobile: 971-533-2451 Intel Corporation Hillsboro, Oregon USA -- Ubuntu-mobile mailing list Ubuntu-mobile@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-mobile
