Dear Maintainer,

Please turn on CONFIG_SIMPLE_DRM and CONFIG_X86_SYSFB
for 32/64 bit x86. SimpleDRM allows a /dev/dri/card0 to exist even in
lesser supported video cards, which makes it easy for Wayland based
display servers, as well as potential things like KMSCon

I am reporting from Debian Stable, which explains why my kernel version
generated by reportbug doesn't match 5.14, but I would like to see this
enabled in the future please.

SimpleDRM is cool and it works. Should make supporting Wayland way easier.
I think it should be turned on

Of course the bootloader needs to be correctly configured, and I couldn't figure out
how to get syslinux to work correctly with it, but it works great with Grub.

It could probably be turned on with

diff --git a/debian/config/kernelarch-x86/config b/debian/config/kernelarch-x86/config
index 95359e18e..594d05f4a 100644
--- a/debian/config/kernelarch-x86/config
+++ b/debian/config/kernelarch-x86/config
@@ -75,6 +75,7 @@ CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION=y
 ## file: arch/x86/Kconfig.cpu
 ##
 # CONFIG_PROCESSOR_SELECT is not set
+CONFIG_X86_SYSFB=y

 ##
 ## file: arch/x86/Kconfig.debug
@@ -608,6 +609,11 @@ CONFIG_DRM_GMA500=m
 CONFIG_DRM_I2C_CH7006=m
 CONFIG_DRM_I2C_SIL164=m

+##
+## file drives/gpu/drm/tiny/Kconfig
+##
+CONFIG_DRM_SIMPLEDRM=m
+
 ##
 ## file: drivers/gpu/drm/i915/Kconfig
 ##

Any possibility this driver can be turned on please? It would be pretty cool if it could.

It is now in a different location and quoting the relevant part of the Kconfig
file for easier evaluation. 8633ef82f101c040427b57d4df7b706261420b94 seems to
be the commit that changed it.

~/dev/kernel.org/linux$ grep -A 28 "config SYSFB" drivers/firmware/Kconfig
config SYSFB
        bool
        select BOOT_VESA_SUPPORT

config SYSFB_SIMPLEFB
        bool "Mark VGA/VBE/EFI FB as generic system framebuffer"
        depends on X86 || EFI
        select SYSFB
        help
          Firmwares often provide initial graphics framebuffers so the BIOS,
          bootloader or kernel can show basic video-output during boot for
          user-guidance and debugging. Historically, x86 used the VESA BIOS
          Extensions and EFI-framebuffers for this, which are mostly limited
          to x86 BIOS or EFI systems.
          This option, if enabled, marks VGA/VBE/EFI framebuffers as generic
          framebuffers so the new generic system-framebuffer drivers can be
          used instead. If the framebuffer is not compatible with the generic
          modes, it is advertised as fallback platform framebuffer so legacy
          drivers like efifb, vesafb and uvesafb can pick it up.
          If this option is not selected, all system framebuffers are always
          marked as fallback platform framebuffers as usual.

          Note: Legacy fbdev drivers, including vesafb, efifb, uvesafb, will
          not be able to pick up generic system framebuffers if this option
          is selected. You are highly encouraged to enable simplefb as
          replacement if you select this option. simplefb can correctly deal
          with generic system framebuffers. But you should still keep vesafb
          and others enabled as fallback if a system framebuffer is
          incompatible with simplefb.

          If unsure, say Y.

Hi,

Since 6.11 entered unstable, I've noticed plymouth falling back to the 3
dot text-mode boot splash on some of my devices using amdgpu.

The most likely reason was reported in:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/issues/264

The proposed workaround is to use SimpleDRM, however this module isn't
built in Debian's kernels. In /boot/config-6.11.2-amd64:

# CONFIG_DRM_SIMPLEDRM is not set

Would it be possible to include this module?

Thanks,

Two solutions have been proposed to implement this:

https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/linux/-/merge_requests/1312
https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/linux/-/merge_requests/1453

The first one builds it as external module, the second one as built-in.
It would be great to have some feedback on the preferred way forward.
Thanks!