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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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The Linux Kernel Preparing To Drop Infrastructure For Old & Obsolete Graphics Drivers - Phoronix (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Damn I’m old. I had at least two of those cards

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I thought I was old, but I've only even heard of the 3dfx 😳

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I must be ancient then. I recognized, and I think used, all of those cards/chips.

Some personally. Some at work. At work I used to maintain and MS-DOS / early Windows graphics program. I had to test the program’s compatibility with a stack of graphics cards.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I'm still angry at nvidia for buying their remains, and not doing anything useful with it.

3dfx had multi GPU support back then, it took quite a while afterwards until somebody else tried that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've had a system in the late 90s with a 3dfx voodoo card. Also had a laptop with a SIS card from the early 2000 era.

The voodoo card was THE card to have it it's day (mine was an older second hand system though). The SIS card... for some reason they decided that standard VESA mode probing wasn't a thing they supported and would hardware crash when that API was used. I eventually got it working in Linux after patching xfree86 to not attempt probing when loading the VESA driver.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I had a SIS card back in the day as well. I never got it working with Xfree86 itself but I did find a proprietary xserver called Accelerated-X that supported it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I think I remember running into that as well but for whatever reason I couldn't get accelerated-x working with the opengl libraries I was using for school. Likely the issue was just a lack of understanding on my part as I don't think I had a good grasp of the Linux library loader until well after I graduated.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I've been using (or, in some cases, trying to use) that when it was brand new. Kernel side was relatively easy - but there was a lot of compiling custom versions of XFree86 trying to get acceleration working properly.

On the one hand a bit sad to see that kind of history I've experienced myself go - on the other hand, it's probably been a decade since I've last used something without KMS, and the ease of use of modern KMS drivers is way ahead of all the older stuff.