2008-07-08

xf86-video-cyrix and xf86-video-nsc: it's dead, Jim

It had to happen sooner or later:

The X.org drivers for the old GX1 variants of the Geode chips formerly made by Cyrix and NSC no longer build against the current X.org release. Given the imminent release of X.org 7.4 (server core 1.5), this essentially means that users of older Geodes will have a nasty surprise, the day they upgrade to Ubuntu/Intrepid, which ships with core 1.5. Soon after, the release immediately following Debian/Lenny will be affected too.

There is a planned milestone to eventually reintegrate support for older GX1 products into the clean and up-to-date xf86-video-geode framework, but this will unfortunately come too late for those upgrading to Ubuntu/Intrepid, unless...

...unless someone volunteers to copy gx_* files inside xf86-video-geode and graft GX1 support into the resulting gx1_* files. If you have access to Cyrix/NSC GX1 + CS5530 or AMD SC hardware and a reasonable knowledge of the X.org codebase, your contribution would be most welcome.

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