AW: Windows Video Drivers on Linux

[Klaus Gerlicher]

What it does is to emulate win32k.sys and videoprt.sys functionality and
hook the X server up to use any available driver for Win2K/XP.

The display driver in windows is a two component model, one DLL and one SYS.
The DLL (display driver) links to kernel-mode GDI (win32k) and calls
EngXXX() functions inside it while the SYS (miniport) links to the VideoPort
(and unfortunately to other NTOSKRNL exports). While the latter poses no
difficulty since XP graphics drivers are supposed to only use exports from
win32k and videoprt, one of the main difficulties will be to get the OpenGL
ICD driver to run on top of Linux since it can potentially call any
user-mode export which would require me to emulate all of the Windows
user-mode environment. WINE could probably help a lot in this respect.

I will let you know as soon as I have the latest Radeon driver running
inside my prototype.

Klaus

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Sylvain Petreolle [mailto:[e-mail]] 
Gesendet: Monday, September 01, 2003 3:13 PM
An: Steven Edwards; [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Betreff: Re: Windows Video Drivers on Linux

Hi Klaus and Steven,
Since this project will provide Microsoft drivers functionnality, will
it emulate vga.dll and others dlls ? I agree with the fact this sounds
really interesting,
but I dont see now in which case this could provide some gain to the
linux user.
Do some display exist and need really specific drivers to function ?
> There is no code yet on this site but I would take this guy at his

word as he is the one
> that developed the Private ICE debugger for Linux. One of our

developers with the
> ReactOS project ported PICE to ReactOS so we could debug drivers.

Well now it
> seems he has decided to try and implement support for Windows Video

drivers on
> Linux.
> This sounds interesting.
> http://www.privatetools.de/
>
> "I'd also like to announce the start of a new project called "MSCGDI"
> (Microsoft Compatible Graphics Device Interface).

=====
Sylvain Petreolle (spetreolle_at_users_dot_sourceforge_dot_net) 
ICQ #170597259

alias upsf='false ; while [ $? -ne 0 ] ; do cvs update -APd ; done 2>&1 |tee
cvslog'

"What if tomorrow the War could be over ?" Morpheus, in "Reloaded".

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[Gerhard W. Gruber]

On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 16:28:58 +0200, Klaus Gerlicher  wrote:
> What it does is to emulate win32k.sys and videoprt.sys functionality and
> hook the X server up to use any available driver for Win2K/XP.
>
> The display driver in windows is a two component model, one DLL and one SYS.
> The DLL (display driver) links to kernel-mode GDI (win32k) and calls
> EngXXX() functions inside it while the SYS (miniport) links to the VideoPort
> (and unfortunately to other NTOSKRNL exports). While the latter poses no
> difficulty since XP graphics drivers are supposed to only use exports from
> win32k and videoprt, one of the main difficulties will be to get the OpenGL
> ICD driver to run on top of Linux since it can potentially call any
> user-mode export which would require me to emulate all of the Windows
> user-mode environment. WINE could probably help a lot in this respect.
>
> I will let you know as soon as I have the latest Radeon driver running
> inside my prototype.

Oh! Seems I was wrong with my assumption that you couldn't be contacted. :)
Good! :)

Could you tell me why you abandoned pICE? Is there a specific reason for this
or only personel? If there is some technical reason I would like to know about
this, as I'm quite interested in this project and I really would like to
continue it in order to have some decent debugger for wine as well.

[Ove Kaaven]

man, 01.09.2003 kl. 16.28 skrev Klaus Gerlicher:
> What it does is to emulate win32k.sys and videoprt.sys functionality
> and hook the X server up to use any available driver for Win2K/XP.
>
> The display driver in windows is a two component model, one DLL and
> one SYS. The DLL (display driver) links to kernel-mode GDI (win32k)
> and calls EngXXX() functions inside it while the SYS (miniport) links
> to the VideoPort (and unfortunately to other NTOSKRNL exports). While
> the latter poses no difficulty since XP graphics drivers are supposed
> to only use exports from win32k and videoprt, one of the main
> difficulties will be to get the OpenGL ICD driver to run on top of
> Linux since it can potentially call any user-mode export which would
> require me to emulate all of the Windows user-mode environment. WINE
> could probably help a lot in this respect.

Well, as an alternative, you could always write a Direct3D HAL driver
for Mesa/DRI. That may get you better hardware compatibility (more
vendors seem to have good Direct3D drivers than good OpenGL drivers),
and the HAL is unlikely to use additional DLLs.