On the future of i386 on Debian

Before we proceed, let's emphasize a few things:

• My Testing hardware is i386 simply because I have plenty of leftovers from older days. These are hosts that I can afford to see randomly break due to transitions.
• Meanwhile, my desktop has been a 64-bit for over 10 years. My laptop for a bit less. Basically, my daily activities don't depend on 32-bit hardware remaining supported.
• I fully agree that there is no sense in making a fresh install on 32-bit hardware nowadays. I therefore support Debian dropping 32-bit architectures from debian-installer.

This being said, I still think that the current approach of keeping i386 among the supported architectures, all while no longer shipping kernels, is entirely the wrong decision. What should instead be done is to keep on shipping i386 kernels for Trixie, but clearly indicate in the Trixie Release Notes that i386 is supported for the last time and thereafter fully demoted to Ports.

Help needed: clean up and submit KMS driver for Geode LX to LKML

Ever since X.org switched to rootless operation, the days of the Geode X.org driver have been numbered. The old codebase dates back from Geode's early days at Cyrix, was then updated by NSC to add support for their new GX2 architecture, from which AMD dropped GX1 support and added support for their new LX architecture. To put it mildly, that codebase is a serious mess.

However, at least the LX code comes with plenty of niceties, such as being able to detect when it runs on an OLPC XO-1 and to probe DCC pins to determine the optimal display resolution on other hardware. This still doesn't make the codebase cruft-free.

Anyhow, most Linux distributions have dropped support for anything older than i686 with PAE, which essentially means that the GX2 code is just for show. Debian is one of very few distributions whose x86-32 port still ships with i686 without PAE. In fact, the lowest common denominator kernel on i386 is configured for Geode (LX).

A while back, someone had started working on a KMS driver for the Geode LX. Through word of mouth, I got my hands on a copy of their Git tree. The driver worked reasonably well, but the codebase needs some polishing before it could be included in the Linux kernel tree.

Hence this call for help:

Is there anyone with good experience of the LKML coding standards who would be willing to clean up the driver's code and submit the patch to the LKML?