01:04.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G200eW WPCM450 (rev 0a)
Oh no! My 10ish year old supermicro server has a Matrix MGA built in to the motherboard and integrated with the ipmi OOB management system. I’m sure I can add in a newer video card but I assume the impi won’t be able to redirect video from it. :'(
Edit: hang on… crisis averted I think, my system is using the mgag200 driver and it doesn’t look like that one is being removed.
For all worrying about it I’d like to say, you can re-add driver code and compile your own kernel, and everything will be working fine, and last time I’ve read wiki there’s SLTC support for Linux 6.1 means your GPUs will be officially supported until 2033
AMD and nVidia on Windows: So your GPU is still very capable and useful for almost everything including most gaming tasks, but it’s a couple years old and not making us money any more? Sucks to be you, have fun hunting for unmaintained legacy drivers with likely security holes from questionable sources.
Linux: Your video card is from a long bygone era of computing, before the term “GPU” was a thing, and basically a museum piece by now? We’ll maintain a long-term support version for you for the next ten years.
I still have a Rage 128 hanging around as a ‘temporary head’ for installing headless servers. Many happy nights playing Thief: The Dark Project with it, and now it’s only good for rendering a TTY at a barely acceptable resolution. And soon, not even that. Goodbye, little e-waste :-(
I must be ancient then. I recognized, and I think used, all of those cards/chips.
Some personally. Some at work. At work I used to maintain and MS-DOS / early Windows graphics program. I had to test the program’s compatibility with a stack of graphics cards.
I’ve been using (or, in some cases, trying to use) that when it was brand new. Kernel side was relatively easy - but there was a lot of compiling custom versions of XFree86 trying to get acceleration working properly.
On the one hand a bit sad to see that kind of history I’ve experienced myself go - on the other hand, it’s probably been a decade since I’ve last used something without KMS, and the ease of use of modern KMS drivers is way ahead of all the older stuff.
I’ve had a system in the late 90s with a 3dfx voodoo card. Also had a laptop with a SIS card from the early 2000 era.
The voodoo card was THE card to have it it’s day (mine was an older second hand system though). The SIS card… for some reason they decided that standard VESA mode probing wasn’t a thing they supported and would hardware crash when that API was used. I eventually got it working in Linux after patching xfree86 to not attempt probing when loading the VESA driver.
I had a SIS card back in the day as well. I never got it working with Xfree86 itself but I did find a proprietary xserver called Accelerated-X that supported it.
I think I remember running into that as well but for whatever reason I couldn’t get accelerated-x working with the opengl libraries I was using for school. Likely the issue was just a lack of understanding on my part as I don’t think I had a good grasp of the Linux library loader until well after I graduated.
Seems like you’re annoyed that I pointed out that what you were saying was irrelevant? And so you reply with more irrelevant crap (on a very nerdy, not-fun-at-parties internet forum for Linux discussion)? Let me know if I got that wrong.
If you’re doing it for the memes then you don’t really need to worry about malware. Your machine is probably too old for anything that’s still floating out there to even work on it.
Many people browse 4-5 pages a day, see a few emails, print a few pdfs, and a core2duo, or x4, for 40#/$/Eu a box run flawlessly with linux and xfce/lxde for example.
Even video-conferencing works fine.
Driver code is still there, you can add it back if you want, same with ide drivers and such, support was removed but code still exists, just add it and compile your own kernel, there are alot of tutorials in internet about it
The drivers were removed in 6.3. Debian 12 is still running on 6.1. Debian 12 just came out and still has many years of support ahead of it (at least 5). You can get plenty of use out of these cards before they stop working.
Someone needs to maintain them for them to keep working. Nobody else is willing to do that anymore, but you can still volunteer as a maintainer. If you don’t, it’s as much your fault as anyone elses.
Linux 6.1 will be maintained for another 10 years by the CIP. The hardware in question will be almost 40 years old at that point. I don’t have a violin small enough for users losing free support after 40 years from maintainers who most likely don’t even own the same hardware to test on…
On the other hand, they were probably unchanged for decades. Did anything really change, or is this just a case of we need to remove 500k lines of code, what is most useless ? Let’s cut that.
In other words, removed because it’s a KPI to remove lines, and this makes number go up.
So if it’s been unchanged for decades then you can just add it yourself and recompile the kernel. Elsewhere you argue that you can’t just add old drivers to a newer kernel, which implies these drivers require some nontrivial amount of maintaince. Which is it.
Keeping code around isn’t free. Interfaces change, regressions pop up. You have to occasionally put in work just to keep it in a working state. Usually in cases like this there are discussions on the mailing list about who is going to maintain them and nobody volunteers. You can do that if you’re so passionate about keeping these drivers around.
They were fine all this time, what changed suddenly ? I bet it’s the security nerds stirring shit, making it all a liability and easier deleted than fixed.
I doubt any hardware 25+ years can even run a modern vanilla linux kernel, you’d have to compile it yourself with some serious customization for it even work
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