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by lotharcable 360 days ago
DRM is literally the 3D acceleration driver framework for Linux. It has been around for decades and is same set of drivers that are used for any sort of accelerated graphics in X.

If you want to get rid of DRM you have to start over and rewrite all graphical drivers for Linux from scratch.

DMA is part of the basic architecture of modern computers. It is how you can do things like have fast USB devices or network devices because it allows device hardware to by-pass the CPU and write things directly to memory.
1 comments
holowoodman 360 days ago
> DRM is literally the 3D acceleration driver framework for Linux. It has been around for decades and is same set of drivers that are used for any sort of accelerated graphics in X.

Yes, exactly. And Wayland ignored it for years, from the start, and only later slowly adopted it as an extension.

> DMA is part of the basic architecture of modern computers.

Yes, I know.

DMA is even older and not limited to Linux or Graphics. Back in the old VESA, SGI and Windows 3.0 times, DMA was a cool new feature (but actually old even then). When Wayland was conceived, it was boring and old. Yet Wayland didn't originally include DMA buffers, just later added it as an extension when it became obvious that they had just gotten rid of a 40 year old feature that was really really necessary for modern graphics...

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ChocolateGod 360 days ago
> Yes, exactly. And Wayland ignored it for years, from the start, and only later slowly adopted it as an extension.

DRM is not part of Wayland, and Wayland does not use DRM. Wayland is the protocol between the display server and application, DRM is a functionality provided by the kernel to allow user space applications to use and share graphics hardware.

The display server can use DRM, as will applications wanting to use OpenGL/Vulkan, but these are not "wayland".

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holowoodman 360 days ago
https://wayland.app/protocols/drm-lease-v1
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ChocolateGod 360 days ago
Did you even read the use case for this? or just Googled 'Wayland DRM' and post the first link?

When VR headsets are exposed to user space, they appear as displays and subsequently the display server will control them (which isn't useful), this is just a protocol that allows clients (like games, SteamVR) to have control transferred so they can drive the VR headset instead. This is because multiple applications are not allowed to control the same display on the Linux kernel at the same time.

It does not make DRM/DRI part of Wayland. Again, it goes back to my original comment of "you use Wayland to communicate with the display server"

IIRC GNOME originally wanted to do this over Dbus, but there was opposition.

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