Kernel modesetting was kind of painful to get on Linux at first, but now it's pretty awesome to have. I mean, X not need to run as root? High-res hardware accelerated consoles? Cool stuff.Problem is, a lot of UNIX platforms don't have modesetting kernel drivers of any sort. So hardware that relies on KMS is now mostly limited to Linux.My question: why actually implement this in the kernel?If hardware access is needed to set the screen resolution, why not use a separate privileged daemon, or a small setuid binary? That would maintain the advantage of separating out the privileged code, and letting the display server run as limited user; while getting rid of the special driver requirement, and making cross-UNIX support easier. Right? Or am I missing something significant here?
Why kernel modesetting, instead of privilege separation?
kernel;xorg;drivers