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Thoughts and rambling on the X protocol (danjou.info)
9 points by obsaysditto on June 1, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


Here's one example that Xorg needs to be updated, if not redesigned.

Many recent laptops bear two graphic cards (ex: Asus u30jc, ul30a), one which is an on-board, weak card that will do the light work and one discrete card which is there for high-definition videos and 3D. The OS should control the activation of those cards using a switch (for NVidia it's called optimus). The point is to save battery life while staying performant.

X does not support the live swapping of video cards (not without restarting, at least). According to the dev guys, we're not going to see that supported until one or two years. And of course, since xorg does not support the switching, Nvidia won't design any drivers for linux - why would they do all the work?




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