Older PC users beware - KDE is looking to drop older video cards for KWin

[dequire]

Martin Gräßlin, lead developer of the compositing window manager KWin, has been considering the future of OpenGL 1.x support in KWin in a blog entry titled "The costs of supporting legacy hardware". He is considering removing the code because almost all modern graphic chips and drivers support the more recent OpenGL 2.0. ...

This also would, at least temporarily, also affect more modern ATI users who use the proprietary drivers, as apparently ATI rather absurdly uses some 1.X OpenGL compatibility mode even to this day.

More info here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTA2MDA

Discussion here: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...PUs#post251354

[OneLine]

A good catch, thank you !

I think that this will take few development cycles. Maybe with the KDE 5.0 or 5.1 ?

Time will take care of the old hardware. Here the old trusty ATI is composting (lost the higher resolutions) but it seems that the AMD is not an option for the new system.

Time to butcher the piggy bank and go to the shopping - hmm what to buy...

[GreyGeek]

It seems that the "window of compatibility" that I've mentioned before on occasions is narrowing.

I recently bought an Acer Aspire 7739 17" laptop. It has an Intel HD3000 GPU. Kubuntu Precise is loading the i915 driver and using the OpenGL ver 2.1.

Stellarium gives me a consistent 30 fps. Minecraft 1.2beta and Enemy Territory gives 30-45 fps. I couldn't be more pleased with a GPU that is supposed to be "midrange".

Hopefully, the "window" will stay wide enough for the next 5 or so years.

[sithlord48]

whats missing is a link to the blog entry. i read it this morning found it to be a nice read.
ill just put that here..

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blo...gacy-hardware/

[dequire]

Thanks, sithlord. In my haste going to a meeting this morning I forgot the original link. Also, I could use a spell check on the thread's title

[SteveRiley]

Oh, I kinda like "frop"

Fixed.

[dequire]

Oh, I kinda like "frop"

Fixed.

[JontheEchidna]

I think that the title for this thread is a bit misleading. The only thing that KWin will have dropped support for with these cards are desktop effects in OpenGL mode. These cards will continue to work without desktop effects, and will even still be able to use the XRender fallback for desktop effects.

[GreyGeek]

I think that the title for this thread is a bit misleading. The only thing that KWin will have dropped support for with these cards are desktop effects in OpenGL mode. These cards will continue to work without desktop effects, and will even still be able to use the XRender fallback for desktop effects.

The way I read it is that support will be dropped ONLY for those cards that require the OpenGL1.x drivers, not those that use OpenGL 2.

To sum it up: we have increased complexity, increased maintenance costs and lots of code just for OpenGL 1.x related hardware which we cannot really test. So a rather bad situation. Additionally it is nothing which we can continue to support in the future. Neither Wayland nor Qt 5 will make sense on such hardware (XRender based compositing might still make sense with Qt 5, but as the name says not with Wayland).

Given this the logical step would be toremove the OpenGL 1.x related code completely. This would of course clash with the demand of some [COLOR=#234865 !important][COLOR=#234865 !important]user [COLOR=#234865 !important]groups[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] thinking we have to run on old legacy hardware. In the case of Intel GPUs it might be in fact true that there is still a larger number of users around – this is of course difficult to judge.

Another real issue for removing is that the proprietary ATI driver (aka Catalyst/fglrx) only provides a decent compositing performance with indirect rendering restricting the available API to OpenGL 1.x. So removing OpenGL 1.x support would mean removing OpenGL compositing support for all fglrx powered systems even if the GPU supports OpenGL 4. But to be honest: given that the [COLOR=#234865 !important][COLOR=#234865 ! important]radeon[/COLOR][/COLOR] driver has no problems with OpenGL 2 on the same hardware, I would not mind removing support for proprietary drivers.

It seems to deal with the i945 driver, not the i915 that uses OpenGL 2.x, or did I misread it?

[SteveRiley]

It seems to deal with the i945 driver, not the i915 that uses OpenGL 2.x, or did I misread it?

There's no separate i945 driver. The i915 driver module, and its associated X driver intel_drv, support multiple Intel integrated graphics products. You can see this in your Xorg.0.log:

(II) intel: Driver for Intel Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810,
i810-dc100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 854, 852GM/855GM, 865G, 915G,
E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM, Pineview G,
965G, G35, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 965GME/GLE, G33, Q35, Q33, GM45,
4 Series, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, B43, B43, Clarkdale, Arrandale,
Sandybridge Desktop (GT1), Sandybridge Desktop (GT2),
Sandybridge Desktop (GT2+), Sandybridge Mobile (GT1),
Sandybridge Mobile (GT2), Sandybridge Mobile (GT2+),
Sandybridge Server, Ivybridge Mobile (GT1), Ivybridge Mobile (GT2),
Ivybridge Desktop (GT1), Ivybridge Desktop (GT2), Ivybridge Server