Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932435AbWENBMA (ORCPT ); Sat, 13 May 2006 21:12:00 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932406AbWENBMA (ORCPT ); Sat, 13 May 2006 21:12:00 -0400 Received: from nz-out-0102.google.com ([64.233.162.202]:5324 "EHLO nz-out-0102.google.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932435AbWENBL7 convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Sat, 13 May 2006 21:11:59 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=LSWhQNOA65ojC2rjR6ExRglOslEZSn1uuXqHnw7N+g8B/bxo2AhRwbG4Ch4mNzz+ovcWGxhQESnxew6Rlt5xxvTAB0baxmLtDcvs6whY8gKN+5d/EomADI/sJfECkPMP7C49UMq06hEk3GyauwE+O0qnGzmKX8ztKw45rRjX/rk= Message-ID: <9e4733910605131811r1a4482d7u6508655e9d3ac376@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 21:11:49 -0400 From: "Jon Smirl" To: "Patrick McFarland" Subject: Re: Add a "enable" sysfs attribute to the pci devices to allow userspace (Xorg) to enable devices without doing foul direct access Cc: "Benjamin Herrenschmidt" , "Peter Jones" , "Martin Mares" , "Matthew Garrett" , "Bjorn Helgaas" , linux-pci@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz, "Dave Airlie" , "Andrew Morton" , greg@kroah.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, "Arjan van de Ven" In-Reply-To: <200605132057.42773.diablod3@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Disposition: inline References: <1146300385.3125.3.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <1146778197.27727.26.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1147566572.21291.30.camel@localhost.localdomain> <200605132057.42773.diablod3@gmail.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1375 Lines: 31 On 5/13/06, Patrick McFarland wrote: > On Saturday 13 May 2006 20:29, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote: > > a long post. > > So, why do we insist on keeping legacy hardware around? I mean, serial and > parallel ports are basically dead, as are ps/2 ports (USB killed them all). > VGA basically died out when DVI came around. Traditional IA32 is now dying > out thanks to x86-64. The basic internals have been surplanted by APIC. We > have a power management API, ACPI, which was unheard of on x86 15 years ago. Because it is the only video interface we have documentation for. Almost all of the video hardware can run in non-VGA mode but we don't have the docs to do this on NVidia/ATI. It is also a universal interface supported by all video cards. You can get things like GRUB and the BIOS up on it with minimal code that will work on all video cards. To get rid of it the video hardware manufacturers would have to come together and define a new, open standard. That doesn't look likely to happen so we are stuck with it. I do agree that it is extremely messy to work with. -- Jon Smirl jonsmirl@gmail.com - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/