Ingo, Rafael,

On Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:17:09 +0200
Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de> wrote:

>
> Before commit, please apply on top:
> 
> -<h2 id="libva">Video Playback Acceleration with Libva</h3>
> +<h2 id="libva">Video Playback Acceleration with Libva</h2>
> 
> because the closing H3 tag mismatches the opeing H2 tag.
>

Good catch. Small style nit I think should be changed too: I
realized any mention of "Libva" (capital "L"), is the incorrect casing.
It should be "libva" (lowercase "l").

After commit, I have some mostly unimportant notes to answer your
questions that could be used for me (or someone else) whom may update
this entry after commit.

>
> I don't have the slightest idea whether this is accurate or helpful,
> but i trust you when you say that it is.
>

It *is* correct, but slightly misleading the way I wrote it, more on
this in [1].

[snip]

>
>  * You say Xenocara has libva support, meaning the library is part
>    of the base system.  In general, we want the base system to be
>    documented.  I do see the directory /usr/xenocara/lib/libva/,
>    and that directory contains significant amounts of code, for
>    example more than 20 C files and almost 100 header files.
>    Ideally, your new FAQ entry should link to the manual pages
>    for libva on man.openbsd.org,
>

I'm not sure what this could look like. This is my first diff for
anything outside the ports@ tree. Perhaps we should ask the maintainer
of the libva-related ports, cos they may have more information on this
than I do. Rafael, what could this look like?

>
>  * How do i find out whether i have an AMD or an Intel card?
>    I suspect this might have something to do with inteldrm0(4)
>    or radeondrm(4) showing up in dmesg(1) - but even i am not
>    really sure - maybe intel(4) or amdgpu(4) is more closely
>    related?  Would it make sense to link to the most closely
>    related manual page?
>

Yes, it would. I'll have to think about what to do here. I too, am
again, not super well versed in this area. I'm out of my element.

>
>  * How do i find out the generation of my Intel GPU?
>    For example, using the web, i guess that "Intel HD Graphics 5500"
>    in the dmesg(1) indicates that i have a generation 8 card -
>    but ideally, understanding the FAQ should not requires
>    searching the web.
>  * So i tried "pkg_add intel-media-driver"
>    and now i see:
>     $ pkg_info intel-media-driver
>       Comment:
>       VAAPI driver for Intel HD 5000 (Gen8) or newer
>    Is that "Gen8 or newer" at odds with the "generation 5 or newer"
>    in the new FAQ entry?
>    Does anything need to be restarted?
>

[1]
The reason I specify gen 5 in this diff is that gen 5 Intel laptop
CPUs are the broadwell chipset, which corresponds to gen 8 integrated
GPUs . Intel's naming scheme is very confusing so I don't know what the
ideal way to phrase this is. I am unsure if a restart of anything is
needed, as my general practice is to reboot after setting up and
configuring a machine.

TL;DR: It's more of a helper library for a hardware function than a
"driver" as I understand it. Rafael would probably explain this area
better than I could.

>
>  * "the binary package tools" sounds a bit wordy and vague.
>    Maybe just link to pkg_add(1)?
>    Linking to FAQ 15 is certainly not wrong, but unless you want
>    to point to a rather unusual task specifically discussed in
>    FAQ 15, for a completely normal and simple purpose, the manual
>    page seems at least as relevant as the FAQ.
>

Yes. Though, I feel linking to packages(7) would make more sense here.

>
>  * Even if this entry is added to the FAQ, i do not think i would
>    ever have found it.  Unless i totally misunderstand, this is purely
>    about hardware support, and having to manually install packages(7)
>    to get hardware support feels unusual to me, and somewhat in
>    violation of the principle of sane defaults.
>    Why is some hardware only supported after manually installing
>    a package?  Is there a downside to using the package?
>    For example, does it pose security risks?  That would
>    explain not having it by default.  But then i would expect
>    a warning in DESCR or MESSAGE.
>

See [1]

-- 
iz (she/her)

> i like to say mundane things,
> there are too many uninteresting things
> that go unnoticed.

izder456 (dot) neocities (dot) org