GNU Linux-libre 6.9-rc5-gnu with candidate i915 fix

[Alexandre Oliva]

Hi,

We have just uploaded 6.9-rc5-gnu to our git repo, and it has a
candidate fix for the loss of features that some i915 users have
reported.

The problem was that the i915 driver was modified upstream to fail to
initialize and disable itself when the driver knows firmware exists for
a card, even if the firmware is not installed, so our approach of
replacing blob names with "/*(DEBLOBBED)*/", so that they'd fail to load
even if we failed to disable the blob load request, led the driver down
the path of trying and failing to load the blob and giving up on the
card.

We've now switched to a different approach for i915: the code that looks
for firmware filenames for a card will now skip entries for blobs, so
that the initializer doesn't find any, and if I'm reading the code
right, proceeds to implicitly disable firmware loading for that card,
like earlier versions of the driver did when attempts to load firmware
failed.

I'd appreciate if users of i915 cards who have faced failed to activate
video cards since 6.5-gnu, if not earlier, would give it a try and let
us know whether the new approach fixes the problem.

When you test it, please make sure you don't use the known work-around
for the problem, namely the i915.enable_guc=0 kernel/boot parameter.

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker                    https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/
   Free Software Activist                           GNU Toolchain Engineer
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