Linux 6.3 to Remove Obsolete GPU Drivers: ATI Rage 128, 3Dfx, S3 Savage, I810 | Hacker News Reader

Linux 6.3 to Remove Obsolete GPU Drivers: ATI Rage 128, 3Dfx, S3 Savage, I810

phoronix.com

37 pointsblakespot24 comments

I recall John Carmack contributing to some of these drivers, especially the ATI Rage driver. I think it's the driver being removed.

Here's an example of his forum posts from 2000 related to working on some of these drivers: https://web.archive.org/web/20000816145733/http://lists.sour...

Poke around here for more:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000815084204/http://lists.sour...

https://web.archive.org/web/20001019083125/http://utah-glx.s...

This is one issue monolithic kernels have unfortunately. Even if you moved the drivers out of tree, you have the issue of the constantly changing kernel API.

These are 20+ year old GPUs though. How many people out there are seriously using an ATI Rage with Linux Kernel 6.0+? There isn't even a Windows Vista ATI Rage driver.

Care to share more? Is this a daily driver or just a proof of concept thing? Genuinely interested

A trusty backup server with 8 SATA drive.

What is being removed are the DRM drivers. Unless you're trying to play quake on your server you won't even notice.

I've seen enough edge cases of "let me run the latest kernel on a Thinkpad T22 for shits" to not understand why to disturb these things unless it frees up a significant amount of space or resources or had some deep bleeding security vuln in them.

That and I wouldn't be surprised if some old VIA integrated systems are still running embedded / industrial applications and would prefer the latest drivers just to maintain the basic security of whatever they are running (eg power plant infrastructure). Seems unnecessary to cut such systems off like that.

I still have an ATI Rage64 in my fileserver for rare cases when I need access to a VT.

Monolithic kernels can have a stable ABIs for drivers, and microkernels can have unstable. It's just a development choice.

I think Rage 128 was released 25 years ago, so seems pretty reasonable to remove them, no?

If anyone still wants to maintain it there shouldn't be any hindrance to keep it as an external patchset somewhere..

ATi Rage128 and Matrox MG200 survived for surprising amount of time in servers and server BMCs, with occasional side use case for Matrox in large multiple display setups for 2D.

I still have one out in the garage in my bin of vintage graphics cards. This card came in my mom's IBM desktop in the 90s. But yeah, lots of old hardware that was amazing in it's prime is completely obsolete and unworkable with current gen operating systems.

R.I.P. Hercules Game Theater XP / GTXP

https://images.hothardware.com/static/migratedcontent/review...

https://hothardware.com/reviews/hercules-game-theater-xp

https://support.hercules.com/en/product/gametheaterxp71-en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Theater_XP

Sound cards seem like a unique case considering the broader agelessness of audio hardware post-ac97. After all, you can still buy modern motherboards like the Asus B550m-C/CSM with full PCI slots on them.

The code will always exist in the history, should anyone get a bug up their ass and want to port one of these drivers to a modern kernel (and implicitly become the maintainer).

Do we need a doomsday unix vault where we keep copies Incase modern fabs are destroyed in a conventional war

There is already a distributed one in every HN’ers closet underneath a bunch of other stuff.

Would it even be possible to get the userspace drivers for these cards working with a kernel this new? Wouldn't you need to compile a really old version of mesa? In that case I'd imagine you'd need all your libraries and programs to be from 20 years ago as well.

Why ? The new kernel and userspace are too bloated for the old HW.

GPU support doesn’t bother me as much as CPU support. For GPUs, if it isn’t modern enough it’s effectively useless for most people beyond VGA/SVGA output. Modern user space requires modern GPUs.

Seems rather a shame.

If we lose GPU functionality but can still work as a generic S/VGA adapter, that seems all well and good. Not much lost there.

I can see a future (maybe in another 5 years) where Windows has better driver support for some old GPUs than Linux does.

My first graphics card was a 3DFX voodoo 3. That was also the first machine I installed Linux on. Throwback!

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