Linked by Hadrien Grasland on Thu 13th Jan 2011 17:13 UTC, submitted by Michael
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Modsetting in the kernel is KMS.
No, KMS is one possible implementation of doing modesetting in the kernel. Nvidia uses another, their own. Wayland doesn't care how the mode is set, just that it is set.
That article is wrong, which is not unusual for Phoronix. Or, to be fair, the article states the current situation. But there are comments in the Phoronix forums from people actually working on graphic card drivers. Nothing in Wayland's design excludes binary drivers (Nvidia blob and fglrx), the changes necessary to make it work are small, and should Wayland gain traction, they will be made.
"Modsetting in the kernel is KMS.
No, KMS is one possible implementation of doing modesetting in the kernel. Nvidia uses another, their own. Wayland doesn't care how the mode is set, just that it is set. "
Exactly. KMS is used to name 2 separate things here: it literally stands for Kernel Mode Setting, but it also is the name of the implementation the OSS drivers use.
There can be many different implementations of KMS - the OSS drivers use one called "KMS" while the proprietary drivers implement their own versions in their kernel modules.
Wayland requires an implementation of KMS, but it won't specifically require the same one that the OSS drivers are currently using.




Member since:
2007-02-17
Modsetting in the kernel is KMS.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=wayland_maverick...
Wayland requires KMS, GEM and a Mesa driver. KMS is kernel modesetting (or modsetting in the kernel, if you like), and GEM is graphics memory mangement, also needs to be in the kernel.
For some parts of a graphics driver to be in the kernel, the kernel developers will only accept it if all of the driver is open source.
Edited 2011-01-14 12:58 UTC