On Thursday 2021-12-23 20:17, Frans de Boer wrote:
On 23/12/2021 11:00, Thomas Zimmermann wrote:
tl;dr: Enable DRM for all graphics output and retire fbdev drivers in TW.
I just wonder what this implies for text based output only?
Hm... disabling efifb would mean you get no kernel console on UEFI until e.g. i915 is successfully loaded. Considering that i915 is not part of the initramfs normally and also requires firmware files (which usually are kernel-version specific), something as simple as upgrading the kernel (without kernel-firmware) could potentially produce black screens. That is not a great prospect.
Another consequence is that the kernel footprint will be raised again due to
DirectRendering is practically already present at all times: The moment i915.ko/amdgpu.ko/etc. (or whatever it is you have) loads, and it loads irrespective of whether you use X11 or not, vesafb/efifb gets switched out for inteldrmfb/amdgpudrmfb/etc. (the names were changed in kernel commit 97c9bfe3f6605d41eb8f1206e6e0f62b31ba15d6). Therefore you lose nothing for which you already paid since practically KMS first became available.