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Linux Support Fades For 3Dfx Voodoo, Rage 128, VIA

Posted by timothy on from the this-way-to-the-ice-floe-folks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The developers behind the Mesa 3D graphics library, which provides the default graphics driver support for most hardware on Linux (and BSD/Solaris), has ended their support for older hardware. Being removed from Mesa (and therefore versions of Linux distributions) is support for hardware like the 3Dfx Voodoo, Intel i810, ATI Rage, and S3 Savage graphics processors. Also drivers being dropped were for Matrox and VIA graphics. Mesa developers also decided it's time to end support for the BeOS operating system. Dropping this code lowered the developers' responsibility by some 100k L.O.C., so maybe we will see GL3 support and OpenCL in Linux a bit sooner."

45 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. A fork for old machines by hendrikboom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sounds like it's time for a legacy fork for old machines. Or maybe just keeping old versions alive, the way Linux distros do with other libraries.

    -- hendrik
     

    1. Re:A fork for old machines by Aspen · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not sure that makes sense...from the article: "Code that was mostly unmaintained and didn't receive new feature support work in years." The volunteers already quit working on it years ago: this is just being honest about it.

      Want to keep using the hardware? Just keep using the 7.11 release.

    2. Re:A fork for old machines by Sarten-X · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree, but I'd love to see someone (with time, experience, and more knowledge than I) take it a step further: A Linux distro to work on ancient machines, with the latest feasible versions of software.

      When I volunteered in Africa in 2009, one of my projects was to set up a computer lab, populated with donated machines. These computers were old. The newest one was manufactured in 2003. The oldest was 1997. I ended up installing Ubuntu and Edubuntu, then stripped down the core as much as I could while still keeping things clean. The machines still take several minutes to boot fully.

      What I'd love would be a distro designed for just such situations. On install, it would determine what kind of hardware you have available, and only install things that will work well. Support for really old hardware would be patched in for the distro, probably with only major bugs receiving repair attention. If a package isn't likely to run well on your system, it will alert you before installing.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    3. Re:A fork for old machines by realityimpaired · · Score: 2

      OTOH, if you're still running a 3DFX VooDoo 2, you're probably not using it for gaming. It still works in VESA modes, and still works as a video card for 2D applications, it's just 3D accelerated modes that won't be supported any more. I have a server that still has an ATi Mach32 in it, and it works no problem, even though it's a much older card than the lot that's being dropped now.

    4. Re:A fork for old machines by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Code that was mostly unmaintained and didn't receive new feature support work in years.

      Code that works doesn't need new features.

    5. Re:A fork for old machines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Voodoo 2 was exclusively for 3D acceleration and had to be used in conjunction with a separate 2D graphics card. It's only use was gaming/3D rendering so it most defiantly won't work as a video card for 2D applications.

    6. Re:A fork for old machines by Lanteran · · Score: 3, Funny

      Rant please :)

      --
      "People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
    7. Re:A fork for old machines by Nimey · · Score: 3, Informative

      True, but if code it depends on changes then it needs maintenance.

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    8. Re:A fork for old machines by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

      Peppermint or Puppy would also have been good choices. They aim (especially Puppy) to be a simple, but very lightweight distros. Puppy feels a little foreign because of the WM it uses, but Peppermint feels natural to this Gnome user even tho its not using Gnome. Everything feels intuitive, and very fast.

    9. Re:A fork for old machines by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      Sounds like it's time for a legacy fork for old machines. Or maybe just keeping old versions alive, the way Linux distros do with other libraries.

      Or you can just run Debian Stable

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    10. Re:A fork for old machines by nemasu · · Score: 2

      Want to keep using the hardware? Just keep using the 7.11 release.

      I hear that release comes with a free Slurpee.

      --
      I made an app! Shoutium
    11. Re:A fork for old machines by Plombo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's no need for a fork. If anyone shows an interest in making one of the old drivers compatible with the current driver interface (there were some recent driver API changes in texture mapping) and maintain it, then it will be added back to the Mesa tree as long as it's maintained and doesn't stay broken.

    12. Re:A fork for old machines by DrXym · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Code that works doesn't need new features.

      Code that worked a few years ago is bitrotten now when the rest of the codebase has received numerous other modifications.

    13. Re:A fork for old machines by SexyKellyOsbourne · · Score: 2

      The big question is why someone would want to ship such legacy hardware to Africa in the first place. The fact that there are major non-profits that do so has always baffled me.

      A quick look at the UPS shipping calculator indicates it would cost upwards of $1300 just to ship a 60lb box (tower + CRT monitor + accessories) to Lagos, Nigeria, much less transport it via truck to a rural area. One could find far cheaper shipping costs than that, but it's expensive to have legitimate shipping to Africa, as things sent there have a bad record of being confiscated.

      For anything within the range of those shipping costs, you could buy two modern systems from a distributor. It costs $577 to purchase a Core 2 Duo system in Lagos. That's a much better deal than dealing with often broken legacy hardware with mid/late-90s graphics cards.

      http://www.eqhall.com/details.php?productID=00013

    14. Re:A fork for old machines by isama · · Score: 2

      seconded, the rants are the reason for me to read slashdot!

    15. Re:A fork for old machines by CBravo · · Score: 2

      The cost you mention do not represent the actual costs of shipping stuff. Shipping a container which is not in a hurry is dirt cheap.

      You could have deducted that yourself. How can a new system be shipped to Lagos from (lets say) China and cost $577. And then you mention shipping computers from the US to Lagos which would be twice (or more) as expensive (without the price of the hardware).

      UPS is ripping you off.

      --
      nosig today
    16. Re:A fork for old machines by SexyKellyOsbourne · · Score: 2

      As I had pointed out, shipping to Africa is rife with corruption. Don't expect it to arrive if you're not 100% sure it's legitimate, which is something taken for granted in most of Americas/Europe/Asia shipping. UPS will ship systems legitimately at that cost, but Dell also ships their brand new computers for sale to Africa legitimately as well with an advanced, low-cost supply chain. Granted, there's still a huge shipping markup in Africa, but it's far cheaper to just buy new PCs in Africa than to ship ancient and often broken PCs there.

      The tax writeoff notion is not even legal. Computers have a straight-line depreciation to scrap value after five years. If you claim the $1500 PC you bought in 1998 with said graphics cards is still worth $1500, it's not legitimate. Especially if you're a business with large numbers of old PCs, you would get busted by your third-party accountants. If you want to skip the dump costs, anything near a minor or major city will have a multi-annual computer recycling event where you can dump old junk all you want.

    17. Re:A fork for old machines by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      Normally I run fedora, but when I was turning a 90s comp into a router a couple years ago I dropped a new-ish debian on it, and everything worked just great. It's a fake problem. The problem is choosing distros like Ubuntu when you should be choosing a more... server oriented distro for old comps.

    18. Re:A fork for old machines by Sarten-X · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's two ways to do business in Africa. First, there's the Western way: Employees do their job honestly, get paid very well for it, and get fired if they're corrupt. UPS probably operates like this.

      Then there's the local way. What you do is fill a shipping container with equipment, then bribe an official, say, $200 on the condition that it arrives safely. Of course, attempting to bribe an official is illegal, but so is aiding theft. For a country where the average monthly wage is $40, that's a big bribe, and it gets the job done. Customs officials approve the shipment quickly (because they'll be willing to help a local, especially if they belong to the same ancient tribe), local truckers can be haggled down to shipping at reasonable rates, and the destination is miraculously free of thieves. Once the job's done, you pay off the bribe and get on with the next bit of business.

      Or so I've heard, at least, from a guy who worked in shipping mining equipment.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  2. ...And? by Megaweapon · · Score: 2

    This is news? Trimming out old cruft from a source code tree isn't a big deal.

    --
    I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
    1. Re:...And? by canajin56 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not running the latest software? Doom 3 running on a Voodoo 2 ;)

      --
      ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
    2. Re:...And? by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 2

      My guess is that they plan to make some changes in the near future that will break it, and nobody cares enough to update it.

    3. Re:...And? by hedwards · · Score: 2

      Well, to be fair, how often does a project cut 100k Libraries of Congress out of their product.

    4. Re:...And? by wagnerrp · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Try as we might, we just can't manage to get you people to migrate to more modern hardware. Frozen and unchanging code means exactly that, the code is not being improved in any manner. We recently redid both the UI and video rendering interfaces. Say we want to further add some animation support to the video renderer for use on the OSD, that code needs to be written for each of Xshm, Xv, OpenGL, VDPAU, VAAPI, XvMC, and PVR-350 framebuffer output. In addition, that's primarily the work of one single guy. XvMC hasn't been supported on any useful hardware sold in the last couple years, and the PVR-350 hasn't been sold for over half a decade. So, we can either continue to support all of those modes, or we can drop the "old cruft" and maybe the people who aren't so cheap as to be unwilling to spend $20 on a video card can have something that looks a bit nicer.

    5. Re:...And? by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because if it hasn't been changed in 7 years, then chances are that nobody really knows the code. Consequently nobody is checking it nor is anybody likely to be paying attention to any breakage which might occur if they change the infrastructure and ultimately it's one more area in which a security vulnerability could pop into existence when somebody changes some other code.

      Having essentially dead code in a project isn't a wise idea in most cases. But beyond that it's extra bandwidth that's not necessary for nearly everybody.

    6. Re:...And? by hedwards · · Score: 2

      It seems that way, but that is an excellent way of killing off a product. There may be a few dozen folks still using those old cards, but you can get a much newer card with a bunch off new features that will be supported for years to come for less than $10, probably including shipping.

      Supporting a bunch of products which were obsolete years ago without adequate user base to ensure that the developers can properly support it can damage projects a lot more quickly than dropping support for long obsolete hardware. More than that, it's that much more code that has to be maintained and it's that much harder to implement fixes or add new features and ultimately it distracts from the hardware that people are still using.

    7. Re:...And? by jimicus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Say we want to further add some animation support to the video renderer for use on the OSD, that code needs to be written for each of Xshm, Xv, OpenGL, VDPAU, VAAPI, XvMC, and PVR-350 framebuffer output. In addition, that's primarily the work of one single guy.

      And people wonder why some F/OSS projects have a slow rate of development.

    8. Re:...And? by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 2

      Not running the latest software? Doom 3 running on a Voodoo 2 ;)

      Doom 3 was released 6 years ago. That hardly qualifies as "latest software".

      Is Doom 4 out yet?

      --
      I am not a crackpot.
    9. Re:...And? by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 2

      My guess is that they plan to make some changes in the near future that will break it, and nobody cares enough to update it.

      Indeed. Old code can be allowed to "live and let live" until such time as architecture, compiler, etc. changes make it uncompilable. Then you've either got to figure out what the hell seven-years-ago guy was doing or cut it out. And if you can live without it (mostly) then the choice is pretty clear.

      --
      I am not a crackpot.
    10. Re:...And? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      > The developer needs to fulfil the requirements of the client. It is not the developer's place to dictate the requirements to the client.

      Here's your refund.

    11. Re:...And? by Plombo · · Score: 2

      It's making it impossible to change the driver interface, for one thing. As new features are added to Mesa, the driver interface has to change. Using the same driver interface for i965 and the Gallium state tracker that's used on a 3dfx Voodoo card creates some problems due to the vast differences in how those generations of hardware work.

      Since the drivers for all of that old hardware were unmaintained, they were hurting anyone who needed to change the driver interface for any reason, because it would sometimes require changing the ancient drivers for which no one has the hardware.

    12. Re:...And? by kylemonger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Explain to me why Win2k with Opera 10.5 would be insufficient to browse the web?

      It would become part of a botnet within hours, that's why. Once your OS and web browser stop getting security updates, the clock starts ticking on the bad guys finding some unpatched vulnerability and your wandering into some trap they've set for you on the net.

    13. Re:...And? by aix+tom · · Score: 2

      And the Developer has to weigh which client needs which features. If a feature is needed by 2000 clients and another feature only by 5 clients, then it makes sense to prioritize the feature needed by the 2000 clients.

      Also, if one client just demands "gimme feature", and it would take 100 hours to implement, and another client says "I would like a feature, and I have prepared this pach here that works with the current development tree, and am willing to check each new version if it breaks anything" then the choice is also easy.

  3. Nooo! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 2

    Matrox!?!

    I still use this card for dual- head support on my P100.

    Maybe the resources freed by the team can be used in providing support for Elite/Impact framebuffers on classic SGI Indigo?

    I will consider that an exchange worth making.

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
    1. Re:Nooo! by Svenne · · Score: 2

      Mesa never provided support for Matrox' P-series cards anyway, so nothing will change in your case.

      --

      Slagborr
    2. Re:Nooo! by RyanFenton · · Score: 2

      Mesa never provided support for Matrox' P-series cards anyway, so nothing will change in your case.

      Wait... are you trying to imitate Jar-Jar Binks?

  4. Only 3D by Randle_Revar · · Score: 5, Informative

    Xorg support for these cards isn't going away anytime soon though.

    --
    Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
  5. OpenCL? by JAlexoi · · Score: 2

    OpenCL in Linux

    I do believe that support for OpenCL in Linux is in the best interest of the GPGPU manufacturers(AMD, nVidia). Because Linux based HPC systems dominate the market and Windows ain't going to unseat Linux anytime soon. Thus you might not have all the features of the 3D stack, however OpenCL is definitely something fully implemented by AMD and nVidia.

    1. Re:OpenCL? by ustolemyname · · Score: 2

      I largely agree with your post as it describes the situation today, but I think it ignores the fact that Intel & AMD have OpenCL pipelines on their consumer parts now, and they seem to be hell bent on bundling those features into the server market. At which point: if all you need is some GPGPU, why would you pay anything for a graphics card?

  6. Re:doesn't anyone pay for electricity? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

    Why would you need 3D graphics support for a home server?

    Then again, why would you use an OS that required X at all for a home server? Just avoid the 'Windows Tailpipe Fume Chasing' options that insist that configuration has to be done using X11. NetBSD is a good option, for instance.

  7. famous last words of a programmer by decora · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Seems like it should require almost no effort."

  8. Re:doesn't anyone pay for electricity? by Sarten-X · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My home server, built in 1999, runs at a maximum of 80W. That means it takes 2 kW (about $0.20) per day, at most. For about $500 I could build a machine that draws 20W, for a monetary savings of about $0.15 per day. In about 10 years, I could break even on what I spent on the new server, but by then, the hardware would be 10 years old again. What I have serves my purposes.

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  9. Already broken by Plombo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most or all of these drivers were already broken because no one cared enough to maintain them or even test them from time to time. Anyone who needs the old drivers can compile out an older version of Mesa from git and run that. Which they already had to do.

    It was also said that if someone comes along who is actually interested in maintaining one of the removed drivers, that the driver would be restored to the source tree.

    Nothing to see here, move along.

  10. Re:You guys by Lanteran · · Score: 2

    Ridiculous. A computer from '06 can and will run any distribution released today.

    --
    "People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
  11. Re:Mozilla syndrome? by Plombo · · Score: 2

    Removing unencumbered open code/GUI/interface etc. which is known to work for no good reason is unhealthy.

    No, it's not "known to work". That's the problem. No one ever tests with those drivers anymore, they break frequently, and no one fixes them. That's why they were removed. If anyone cares enough to fix and maintain them instead of just complaining on Slashdot, they will be added back to the tree.