On Friday 29 January 2010 01:57:01 Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 01:09:21PM -0500, Tom Horsley wrote:
> So why was kernel mode setting such a huge improvement? :-).
Well, speaking only for two different pieces of NVidia and two ATI
cards in my household, it makes for a beautiful graphical boot
process. YMMV, but all my machines start up with the boot logo and
fade smoothly into a GDM login as intended. With more good bug
reports and testing help from the community, we can achieve even
better coverage.
Intel included as well. :-)
In addition, IIRC the intent was also to provide a "flicker-free" boot, ie.
avoid having the monitor switch resolutions several times during boot. IOW,
it's not just a eye-candy plymouth boot, but also avoiding that ugly annoying
"click" that the monitor does when switching. Also, the virtual terminals look
much nicer in hi-res. :-)
Finally, the KMS idea is apparently more elegant code-wise, because it neatly
splits the kernel-side and user-side of the driver. At least in the nouveau
case --- they don't even support non-KMS driver anymore. I believe there is a
trend to do the same in the intel and radeon world as well.
All in all, bleeding edge software, and our own choice to run it... ;-)
Best, :-)
Marko