Perhaps I did not say much new, if I say I'm a rabid fan of the new DRM stack introduced in 2.6.38 kernel and Gallium MESA's. Is there anyone who has not seen it yet?

I build (almost) daily packages for the MESA and some video drivers, using git HEAD code, right the current versions of the developers. Why? To study the evolution of graphics stack of Linux, and also, I use them in desktop systems which I oversee, with great success.

What you can find in Gallium? Well, not only that Nouveau and R300 already are native Gallium, but all development for the R600 is only into Gallium and I915G/I965G are faster, even if some elements are not implemented yet.

If you want to experiment with Git HEAD, MESA's and video drivers, I decided to upload these packages (including their sources, of course) to our server and can be found here.

http://ftp.darkstarlinux.ro/slackware/xdrivers/

Also, there you can find a suite of packages for generic version of 2.6.38.2-SMP, which uses testing/source/linux-2.6.38.1-configs/config-generic-smp-2.6.38.1-smp. If you are interested in the PAE/NX version of these kernel packages, I can upload them, tomorrow.

The Game Rules And What To Expect

* These packages are unofficial, I build them just for my use and study, and I must say that I am not part of the Slackware team. Please do not post questions about these packages outside of this thread or to someone from Slackware team!

* These packages are built always using the version: Git HEAD, then this is development code. Even if you will be surprised by their performance (when works), they may crash gracefully, or your computer can start to run after the dog in the yard. Always be prepared to rollback to your 'safe' packages and do not use these packages in production/critical systems!

* I watch these packages: libdrm, udis86, mesa, xf86-video-ati, xf86-video-intel and xf86-video-nouveau. Of course, I can watch other video drivers too, but only those video-cards I have and I can test on them. Therefore, the tested drivers are:

I915G : Intel G31 Integrated Graphics, 256MB shared memory
R600G : ATI HD4350, 512MB memory
Nouveau : NVidia GeForce 210, 512MB memory

* Unlike the official Slackware MESA package, the MESA package is built using Gallium version of all its drivers, UDis86 and LLVM. Therefore, this package have an incredible size, typically 36MB.

* A set of packages have the format <name>-<version>_git<date>-<arch>-<build><tag>.txz. It is strongly recommended that you to upgrade all packages with the same <date> simultaneously.

* Packages are always built using slackware-current, which is published by the Slackware team at that <date>.

* I will not create a slackpkg/slapt-get repository, because the old builds will be preserved for a possible rollback. Therefore, it is recommended, you to create a mirror using lftp, for example. You must remember that someday you have to do rollback to previous packages.

What To Expect In The Near Future

A new build, most likely tomorrow ...

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Finally, I wish you to find which packages works better for you.

And, of course, I wait your suggestions and comments.

Thanks for this initiative.

I'm trying to keep up with this stack as well, but only with Nouveau as I have a nVidia Corporation Quadro NVS 140M (rev a1) aka NV86 => NV50.

Caveat : people needing the very last nouveau kernel driver should get it from git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/nouveau/linux-2.6, see this page: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/ for a starter.

As present though individuals wanting to give a try to kernel 2.6.39-rc1 will find pretty up to date ones included

Enough said, I'm going to configure && build it right now

EDIT. Done.

Excellent, thx very much

Darth,
I've downloaded your source directory, so as to build these for slackware64-current. Will extracting your ".config" file & modifying the Slackware SlackBuild for the kernel be appropriate, or have you done something more than that?
Regards,
Bill

There is nothing special about the kernels.

For SMP version, as I said, I use the config-generic-smp, provided by slackware-current's 'testing/source/linux-2.6.38.1-configs'. There is no major differences between 2.6.38.1 and 2.6.38.2 as .config options.

The BIGMEM64 version differs only by using HIGHMEM64, and, as cosmetics, XZ compression. So, this kernel supports up to 64G memory.

BTW, the today build, 20110401 is up.