The Linux kernel will abandon the "outdated graphics driver infrastructure" in the future, and old hardware users can stay at the 6.6 LTS version.

CTOnews.com, November 24, SUSE engineer Thomas Zimmermann recently revealed in the developer's mailing list that the Linux kernel will give up support for the "outdated graphics driver infrastructure" in the future, and old users with related hardware can stay in the 6.6 LTS version of the Linux kernel.

The old user space mode setting drivers have been removed in Linux v6.3, and no one has complained or asked to restore these drivers, and it is time to remove the infrastructure of these drivers from the DRM core.

The recent Linux kernel v6.6 has been designated as a long-term supported version, and users who are still using the old hardware still have several years to get a new graphics card, and the simple drm still supports the old hardware. Merging the appropriate driver with kernel mode settings is also an option.

Patches 1 through 7 fix some trivial problems that were forgotten during the driver removal process.

Patches 8 and 9 remove the old ioctl interface. One of the operations is different from the others, so it has its own patch.

Patches 10 through 12 remove the traditional source code from DRM. With the removal of this part of the code, the AGP code in Patch 13 can also be simplified. There used to be a device file for user space mode settings, / dev/ agpgart, which is now out of date.

Patch 14 removes this option from Kconfig.

CTOnews.com found that, in fact, the Linux kernel has begun to gradually remove outdated GPU drivers, which can improve space usage and provide users with better performance and stability. In fact, Linux kernel 6.3 has officially removed drivers including ATI Rage 128, 3Dfx, S3 Savage, Intel 810 and so on.