[arch-general] Mesa is splitting off legacy drivers from main

[David C. Rankin]

On 12/5/21 6:43 AM, Lone_Wolf via arch-general wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> Mesa main has started dropping support for classic drivers[1] .
> 
> This will affect users of Amd cards using r100 & r200 chipsets, (old) Nvidia
> cards using nouveau-vieux and Intel i915c & i965c .
> 
> The plan is to support those older drivers through a new mesa LTS version that
> can be installed alongside normal mesa.
> 
> 
> Archlinux team will have to decide whether to add a mesa-lts package to keep
> supporting that hardware or just drop official support for them and hope some
> users will support them through aur.

Linux runs on a lot of old boxes. Dropping hardware support is a bad idea.
Either continuing hardware support though Mesa or Arch packaging Mesa-LTS is
the correct approach. Having someone wanting to try Arch load it an it fails -
expecting them to have also read all about AUR and split functionality is
unrealistic.

Unless there is a clear burden on the packages that justifies dropping
hardware support - keep it.

(and the burden would need to be significant, not some "white-glove" test of
-- I have to add a new compile option... let's drop it)

Just my $.02. Arch generally does the right thing, so I suspect it will here
as well.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.