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VIA Announces Open Source Driver Initiative
Aron Schatz writes "VIA has announced that they will start a new site (http://linux.via.com.tw — doesn't exist yet) specifically for the development of open source drivers. From their press release: 'Over the following months, VIA will work with the community to enable 2D, 3D and video playback acceleration to ensure the best possible Open Source experience on VIA Processor Platforms. 'To further improve cooperation with the community, VIA will also adhere to a regular quarterly release schedule that is aligned with kernel changes and release of major Linux distributions. In addition, beta releases will be issued on the site as needed, and a bug report and tracking feature will also be integrated.' Nvidia should be next."
For those who don't know, the Zonbu is really a rebranded VIA Artigo: http://what-is-what.com/what_is/zonbu.html (disclosure: my site)
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
They've timed this to fairly well coincide with a new processor design that promises better performance than what they've had to date. Hopefully not just drivers but optimizations for their CPU will take off in maturity alongside the growth of their deployed footprint.
NVidia use a whole lot of IP from other vendors, and they CAN'T make everything open source because of that. NVidia has made massive efforts in helping their products work on linux as smoothly as possible, and should be praised for their efforts, not berated.
If Via own all the IP they use, great! They'll be able to open source the lot. NVidia doesn't, so can't, so why give them a hard time after all their efforts to open source as much as possible?
We're seeing more and more VIA CPUs in Linux-based "low-end" laptops. I think this really bode well for Linux. If we establish a presence in these internet-as-an-appliance devices, we can use it as a staging point to move into the desktop market.
Learn about Photography Basics.
The quote syntax made me think VIA said that about NVIDIA in their press release. :(
I think that would be terrific, but the announcement/article didn't say that... this is wild speculation as far as I can see.
ATI pissed me off too often where I had ATI in my Dell laptop for quite a while. I watched friends with nVidia in their machines do all sorts of nice things under Linux that I couldn't do with ATI. It was annoying, so eventually I bought an nVidia card for my laptop to replace the ATI and I too was doing nice things under Linux that I couldn't do with ATI... then ATI announced they were going strong on releasing their hardware specs and stuff like that opening the door for completely OSS drivers for ATI hardware. (I haven't seen anything yet, but I haven't been watching since I switched to nVidia.)
And now here I sit with nVidia hardware in my laptop... waiting for driver updates, features and bugs to be added... same-ole-same-ole. I'd love for the speculation that nVidia will essentially fold under the pressure, but at the moment, I don't see that they are showing any signs of pressure.
Nvidia should be next
... some time in 2087.
Yes, just as soon as they get the Vista Drivers sorted out
Can you get the Zonbu at zombo?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
While not exactly a major powerhouse by my estimate, VIA still holds a pretty decent hunk of marketshare. Nice to see one more (relatively) large player see Linux as a valid enough market to make this kind of effort.
I'll believe it when I see the drivers working on my Ubuntu system with desktop effects active. I've tried the OpenChrome drivers and other things and nothing works with the UniChrome Pro CN400/PM880 video card that I have. Via has been very disappointing so far.
They go out of their way to encourage the growth of an ecosystem in which their products can compete. Not too long ago I hadn't heard of any PC/laptop processors besides AMD/Intel, but thanks to VIA's encouragement of the Ultra-mobile PC market (or 'netbooks' as Intel likes to call them) they have suddenly become a player.
VIA created the nanobook reference design for mini-laptops that use their low-cost, low-power chips. Already the CloudBook has come out based on that design, and in other countries various similar laptops have been released from different distributors. Now they're stimulating essential linux development, which will continue to increase the value of their low-cost platform. This has "win" written all over it; we're all going to come out ahead thanks to their strategy.
Who else typed in "linux.via.com.tw" anyway?
I hope they consider extending it to their crypto accelerator. Even low end Via boards (like the C3 I bought two years ago for $60 from newegg) include a hardware RNG and low level AES routines, and it would be cool to get some proper support. I've used Sun's crypto accelerators on their T2000's and the difference on certain algorithms is stunning.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Hopefully they will officially GPL their wireless drivers too. They have source code for a nice, hackable, soft-MAC driver right now but no license.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
VIA opened up their drivers? Is that a flying Porcine I witnessed this afternoon on the way home from work?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The Via H/W random generator is used as a /dev/[u]random driver in current kernels, and the AES engine is available as an openssl 'engine', so I'm not sure what else you need.
Via really stuffed up, however, when they made repeated half-baked attempts at 'semi-binary' drivers which worked only on ancient versions like Redhat 9 and wouldn't provide any support or information on the MPEG decoding chip (in the CLE266 and above) which was essential to getting working DVD and DVB playback on the low power boards like the Nemiah.
I won't hold my breath...
I agree with the general sentiments on the VIA-Linux relationship. However, my old system with a 1 GHz Nehemiah [sic] and CLE266 played DVDs just fine without MPEG2 acceleration, using MPlayer.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
What about the Envy24 audio chipsets? These chipsets are sweet but the documentation is locked up.
Finally, I won't have to bring my proprietary clubs to the golf course!
Methinks "VIA will work with the community" translates to "VIA would really like the community to do all the work, and will be good enough to host it on their website", perhaps?
expandfairuse.org
My pet rat runs Linux.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I know it does, actually.
Their press announcement arrived before any content, sigh.
The PR says the website will start with: drivers, technical documentation, source code, and information regarding the VIA CN700, CX700/M, CN896 and the new VIA VX800 chipsets. It'd be good to see docs on their more widely used chipsets, like vt8235 and vt8237 ... detailed ones, including errata. I mean, currently they piss off almost everyone who uses their chipsets, so why would anyone want to buy NEW hardware with VIA chips if it's not even clear the current stuff can be made to work well?
It's a nice idea, years overdue. But even at that, pre-announced.
Common yes, standard, no. .tw .
And I've ONLY ever seen it for
Millions to dump into support of top level domains? What?
Any bum can have a dot com.
Take MSI.
They own www.msicomputer.com and www.msi.com.tw .
They don't own www.msi.com .
I should be able to type in company.com, and if necessary, get redirected to company.tw .
No reason to have company.com.tw , and no reason to not just have company.com . Millions? What?
It looks like that article is out of date.
How's the 3D acceleration? What about desktop effects and compositing (compiz)?
If there's a video decoder on the card (h.264), can you use it?
It's not fglrx I'm interested in comparing this to, it's this vs nVidia's binary drivers, and vs Windows on the same card.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If it's GPL3, does that mean Microsoft may NOT re-use the code?
It would be interesting if all vendors did the same.
Anyhow, good news, everyone!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Really.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
So, I have to buy a new laptop to get linux drivers for it... yippee. I'm glad to see finally some linux support, but drivers on laptops have been an issue for quite some time now. I hope they release drivers for old stuff too.
A few months ago while working on an embedded GNU/Linux system running on VIA hardware I found that many of the VIA kernel modules were labeled as GPL in modinfo. I e-mailed a contact I had at VIA asking for the source but was told that VIA only set the license to GPL so they would compile(meaning they used GPL only symbols). I went back and forth with them for a couple of weeks about how this was illegal until my boss and I escalated it to legal. Legal finally told via that my company(a very large hardware manufacture) would not use any VIA hardware that we felt violated the GPL. We were told that they were working on a solution and would get back to us before launch. Today VIA sent us this.
"There are 10 people in the world: those who know about number systems with sufficiently large bases."
and what about the other 11?
Browse the mythtv lists and you will find many h.264 on linux users, I actually watched h.264 yesterday on my linux box.
The problem is the lack of multithreading on h.264 more than the lack of GPU offloading, the GPU offload barely works in windows I would like to add.
h.264 on Linux is core2 today, here are som examples on playback hardware
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/HD_Playback_Reports
So please stop this myth about h.264 not being possible on linux.
The Ubuntu provided NVIDIA binary drivers are NOT automatically copied into initrd/initramfs and to the best of my knowledge never have been (it is possible to manually specify to happen but why would you? This is not a driver needed to load the kernel from the harddisk). It IS true that there is a script that runs early on (but long after the ram disk has been disposed of) that often means that the Ubuntu provided driver is loaded before manually compiled ones. How to stop this happening is covered in the Ubuntu NVIDIA manual install doc though.
...so why are VIA trying to split open source driver development resources instead of partnering with/providing support for the existing project that is already being run by a Linux kernel developer. IMO that would do more to actually help the state of open-source drivers, instead of sounding more like a grab for headlines.
This seems especially stupidly timed the LDP's recent status report.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Remember to write VIA through http://via.com.tw/ and say thank you for choosing to embark on a FOSS strategy.
Via have had a long time to make good drivers, and there are already OSS projects to which they could have contributed i.e. the OpenChrome or Unichrome drivers. However, they chose to release their own binaries for limited and very old distros, and provided source with a nightmare compile process (see my experiences here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=430420&cid=22186390). If they really wanted to help they could have given the data sheets to these projects and maybe send them some development platforms for free.
It really does seem that this move comes after a long period of letting their Linux support stagnate. If anything, I'm sceptical and wouldn't be surprised if this is Via solution to their Linux problem, and are now hoping the community will fix them up with little investment from themselves.
I hope I am wrong, and Via will really be actively involved in supporting driver development at every opportunity.
-- Mike
All this reports of h264 on linux are H264 played back on the CPU (using mplayer's ffmpeg library).
A normal mid- to hi- range CPU on a normal or small form factor motherboard.
What the parent was hoping for was support in Linux for *HARDWARE* assisted decode, the H264 decompression being handled in some hardware chip, either a dedicated chip (as it was the case back in the beginnings of MPEG2/DVD and DXR3/EM8300 chips) or using a graphic card that has hardware H264 acceleration, and coupling this with a cheap low power CPU on an embed motherboard (Mini- to Nano- ITX board).
The current problem is that the decoding function on VIA Chrome serie is only partially implemented (MPEG1/2 only for some older models, none of the MPEG4 that some chip offer function is available on Linux).
As the next Chrome 400 serie will probably handle h264 in hardware, if good opensource drivers are developed for it, it's going to please Linux users who might be interested into building HTPC solution based on cheap low power MiniITX boards (probably a Issaiah + Chrome 440 combo from VIA).
This is also good news for all the asian maker of small harddisk set top box, as often they base their product on MiniITX boards.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I sure hope they get in contact with the folks at the openChrome Project. They've developed a very capable drive for the VIA Unichrome embedded video chipset, which is used on most of their boards nowadays. It'd be good to see some collaboration on this front.
If they BSD their code, they give it away.
If they GPL it, YOU can still install it on a BSD system (your system is now part GPL but as a USER this is no different) and VIA get to ensure that competitors do not get free stuff at their expense.
You do realize that 100's of companies can claim the initials "MSI" correct in different markets, but there is only one "msi.com" and somebody else got there first. People have to change up their name to get an easy to remember domain. Other wise we could require the actual corporate "name", something a foot long spelling out all the words, that's what actually trademarked as the legal name of many companies.
That's not the point.
.com.tw I have never seen .com.uk (.co.uk sure, but that's explainable). I was wondering if there was some stupid reason .com.tw had to be used, you know, like how .co.uk is used.
Why not just have msi.tw ?
Why not just have msicomputer.com (which they do have)?
Why company.com.tw ?
company.tw or company.com is simpler, and easier to remember.
companysomething.com is better, if company.com is taken.
And this is an issue I have only ever seen with
I'm running Linux and have multithreaded decoding of H.264 - works GREAT! CABAC patch to FFMPEG is apparently what does it and no my movies don't have funky stuff done to them during encoding. Lots of converted HD-DVD and one BD so far. Take a look at XBMC on Linux to see this in action. The developers there can tell you more about what they had to do. I see multicore decoding on more than just H.264 too....
http://xbmc.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=52/ XBMC needs more deelopers too guys, help them out - it's an awesome project! Now running on Linux, OSX, and Windows using SDL!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org