Comment 352 for bug 252094

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:45:14PM -0000, James Strother wrote:
> But, have you considered supplying a package with an older version of
> xserver that could run the i810 driver?

To be honest, we're stretched pretty thin already just maintaining one
version of X.org. At over 180 separate packages, totally almost 2000
bugs[1], we've got a lot of work cut out for us.

I say "us" because while there is only one paid X.org maintenance
position, there are about a dozen volunteers who contribute a lot of
time maintaining various bits and pieces of the stack, without which
your X would be much worse.

Within a given Ubuntu release, all of the 180 X packages are tested to
work with the version of the xserver included in that release. Each
version of xserver provides a different ABI, that all X.org packages
have to be built against. Including a second version of xserver would
necessitate testing those packages against that version as well, and in
some cases providing two versions of those packages in order to account
for the ABI differences. For instance, even if we only supported a
single video driver with that second xserver, we'd need to package and
support two versions of each of the couple dozen input drivers, and
probably two sets of packages for xorg, xrandr, xinit, xauth, and on and
on. A LOT of work.

I don't think any OEMs shipping 8xx purchased support contracts with
Canonical that would help us justify putting resources into supporting
these older chips. But let's imagine that they did. In this case,
wouldn't it make more sense rather than pouring all that time and effort
into an xserver backport, to instead fund making the -intel driver work
better with the 8xx chips directly?

Now, given the large amount of bugs against 8xx, you might conclude
Ubuntu is not giving any attention to this chip. In fact that's not the
case[2], but getting proper support for it depends a lot on community
involvement. I can help by doing packaging, liaising with Intel,
giving coding advice, and even coordinating efforts, but I'm just one
guy and can't take on responsibility for supporting the chipset alone.
But I would love to help you and others like you in forming a
i810 development community[3] to get support that this chip deserves.

Bryce

1: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+packagebugs
2: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-x/2009-April/thread.html
3: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/6270/comments/72