As noone responded to my question in http://www.spinics.net/lists/dri-devel/msg08851.html (yes, it was a bit hidden in a thread), I'm asking it here again (and also on the Wayland mailing list).
Basically I'm still puzzled about this KMS thing. If the name "Kernel Mode Setting" covers it, then how does it compare to plain fbdev? Just additional frame buffer memory management? Also, some people may remember we did have kernel messages (e.g. oops, panic) on graphical consoles with fbdev, until people started not liking them showing up on their X desktops...
Furthermore, everybody states that "future desktop" (that's http://wayland.freedesktop.org/) will require KMS drivers. How do/will we handle this on dumb frame buffers? It's not like we can't do "advanced" things like compositing using the CPU. Transparency may stretch it a bit on lower end CPUs, but you don't always need that.
Thanks for your answers and comments!
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
-- Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. -- Linus Torvalds