On 08/28/2013 10:41 AM, Solomon Peachy wrote:
On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 10:13:09AM -0400, Basil Mohamed Gohar wrote:
> Sorry to come out of left field like this, but would the system profile
> info we collect on install be useful in determining the weight of the
> need for some of these drivers? For example, if there is still a bunch
> of SIS video adapters out there, we might prioritize support for that
> driver, but then not for others that don't show-up in our hardware surveys.
Another way to look at it is the platform capabilities of these graphics
devices. For example, Fedora 19's release notes claims a minimum of 1GB
RAM is required. Were there any pre-PCIe platforms capable of
supporting this much RAM?
Plenty! The common limitation in the pre-PCIe era was 2GB or 4GB (e.g.,
common 32-bit architecture memory limits). I have several that are
non-PCIe and have 2GB of RAM. They run Fedora just fine. They do,
however, have more modern AGP-based video cards installed, however. I
haven't bothered with the embedded video adapter on them, so I cannot
speak to their suitability for running Fedora 19.
Ditto on the embedded graphics (eg SiS or i810 etc) -- many of those
platforms had serious RAM limitations too. I have a pile of old P4+i845
boxes stacked in a corner that max out at 512MB (due to chipset
limitations) which isn't even enough RAM to boot the Fedora installer in
text mode.
On the other hand, graphics chips that were available on PCI add-in
cards could theoretically be used on modern systems, so those may be
worth continuing to support.
- Solomon
I just wanted to comment about the memory issue. I cannot say much else
about the rest here.
--
Libre Video
http://librevideo.org