Subject: Re: [bug#38403] [PATCH] gnu: Add intel-vaapi-driver-g45-h264.

From: Jelle Licht <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2019 12:00:43 +0100

Hey Tobias,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice via Guix-patches via <[email-masked]>
writes:

> Jelle,
>
> Jelle Licht 写道：
>> I am not sure if this package offers any practical benefit or 
>> not, so I
>> defer to someone who actually knows what they are talking about 
>> to make
>> a judgment call ;-).
>
> I don't have a G45, but if this driver verifiably works for you 
> (and the regular version does not) I think it's good to to include 
> it.  Also because I expect this card to be overrepresented amongst 
> Guix users: there aren't that many common Librebootable machines.
>
> It needs its own clear synopsis, description, and home page 
> though.  Is there a home page?  I'm not good at navigating 
> BitBucket.

I am in contact with the upstream author (of this tarball): They do not
have access to a G45-based chipset, so we are currently looking into
options for the future. There is currently no home page.

The actual bitbucket repo has been made public only yesterday, so it was
not that weird that you could not find it :-).
>
>> This variant of intel-vaapi-driver is a backport of the ancient 
>> g45-h264
>> branch that used to be maintained by the intel-vaapi-driver 
>> team. As far
>> as I know, the reason they don't maintain this branch anymore is 
>> that
>> hardware accelerated h264 decoding on the G45 chipset was much 
>> too slow
>> for 1080p video, as by default it only had 32MB of VRAM to work 
>> with.
>
> These devices don't have their own RAM chips, so ‘by default’ here 
> means the BIOS menu setting, right?  If so, it should be mentioned 
> in the description for lack of upstream documentation.
This is correct. I think it makes sense to point people to the right
documentation for at least libreboot and coreboot, and refer them to
their BIOS supplier for other instructions.

OTOH, I do not feel that the package description is the right place to
do this. Where would such instructions normally exist on GNU/Linux
machines?

> I'm guessing that your card identifies as an Intel® GMA X4500MHD. 
> Is that correct?  We should include the marketing name in the 
> synopsis & description too, even if it might not map 1:1 to the 
> chipset.
Yes on all fronts.

- Jelle