Linux Support Fades For 3Dfx Voodoo, Rage 128, VIA

An anonymous reader writes "The developers behind the Mesa 3D graphics library, which provides the default graphics driver support for most hardware on Linux (and BSD/Solaris), has ended their support for older hardware. Being removed from Mesa (and therefore versions of Linux distributions) is support for hardware like the 3Dfx Voodoo, Intel i810, ATI Rage, and S3 Savage graphics processors. Also drivers being dropped were for Matrox and VIA graphics. Mesa developers also decided it's time to end support for the BeOS operating system. Dropping this code lowered the developers' responsibility by some 100k L.O.C., so maybe we will see GL3 support and OpenCL in Linux a bit sooner."

Only 3D

[Randle_Revar]

Xorg support for these cards isn't going away anytime soon though.

Re:A fork for old machines

[Aspen]

Not sure that makes sense...from the article: "Code that was mostly unmaintained and didn't receive new feature support work in years." The volunteers already quit working on it years ago: this is just being honest about it.

Want to keep using the hardware? Just keep using the 7.11 release.

Already broken

[Plombo]

Most or all of these drivers were already broken because no one cared enough to maintain them or even test them from time to time. Anyone who needs the old drivers can compile out an older version of Mesa from git and run that. Which they already had to do.

It was also said that if someone comes along who is actually interested in maintaining one of the removed drivers, that the driver would be restored to the source tree.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:A fork for old machines

[Anonymous Coward]

The Voodoo 2 was exclusively for 3D acceleration and had to be used in conjunction with a separate 2D graphics card. It's only use was gaming/3D rendering so it most defiantly won't work as a video card for 2D applications.

Re:A fork for old machines

[Nimey]

True, but if code it depends on changes then it needs maintenance.

Re:A fork for old machines

[Sarten-X]

There's two ways to do business in Africa. First, there's the Western way: Employees do their job honestly, get paid very well for it, and get fired if they're corrupt. UPS probably operates like this.

Then there's the local way. What you do is fill a shipping container with equipment, then bribe an official, say, $200 on the condition that it arrives safely. Of course, attempting to bribe an official is illegal, but so is aiding theft. For a country where the average monthly wage is $40, that's a big bribe, and it gets the job done. Customs officials approve the shipment quickly (because they'll be willing to help a local, especially if they belong to the same ancient tribe), local truckers can be haggled down to shipping at reasonable rates, and the destination is miraculously free of thieves. Once the job's done, you pay off the bribe and get on with the next bit of business.

Or so I've heard, at least, from a guy who worked in shipping mining equipment.