Bugzilla – Bug 1212947
Disable fbdev userspace interfaces and programs
Last modified: 2024-05-14 07:12:57 UTC
We want to remove fbdev from kernel and userspace as far as possible. Linux 6.6 will allow us to disable fbdev's userspace interfaces, most noteably /dev/fb*. Enable this feature in the TW kernel. Framebuffer support has been an endless source of bugs. Not giving userspace access to it's internals and framebuffer memory will close a possible entry point for all sorts of malware. Please note that the framebuffer console is implemented entirely within the kernel and will not be affected by this change.
AS mentioned on the mailing list, I have SPI based display's for the Raspberry PI that I still use /dev/fb* with which I think is not uncommon for that platform. There are still tools like fbi and some graphical toolkits that can render directly to the framebuffer that often make sense in that environment.
(In reply to Simon Lees from comment #1) > AS mentioned on the mailing list, I have SPI based display's for the > Raspberry PI that I still use /dev/fb* with which I think is not uncommon > for that platform. There are still tools like fbi and some graphical > toolkits that can render directly to the framebuffer that often make sense > in that environment. Any reason why you cannot use DRM for these?
Note that /dev/fb* supports /sys/class/graphics/fb0/rotate, not aware of anything like that for DRM. That means that switching from FB to DRM interface is a regression for people using the kernel interface to tell the application how to rotate the output. Because the kernel interface exists many applications do not have corresponding userspace option at all.