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VIA Releases 800 Pages of Documentation For Linux
billybob2 writes "VIA has published three programming guides that total 800 pages in length and cover their PadLock, CX700, and VX800/820 technologies. The VIA PadLock provides a random number generator, an advanced cryptography engine, and RSA algorithm computations. The VX800 chipset was VIA's first Integrated Graphics Processor, while the CX700 is a System Media Processor designed for the mobile market. This is another step in VIA's strategy to support the development of Free and Open Source drivers under Linux, which comes pre-installed on VIA products such as the Sylvania NetBook, HP Mini-Note, 15.4" gBook, gPC, CloudBook, Zonbu, and VIA OpenBook. Earlier this week, VIA hired Linux kernel developer and GPL-Violations.org founder Harald Welte to be VIA's liason to the Open Source community."
Now Linux drivers can be written for the hardware. Just like TFS says.
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
How many pages in width?
I'm sure Linux developers love having their cake and eating it too!
The cake is a... yeah, you saw that one coming didn't you?
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
I hope they used a very tiny font!
I want to love Via, but they keep disappointing me.
ATI started off with 800 pages as well. They kept adding to it, to the point where ATI graphic chipsets are almost as well supported Intels, and even have budding 3D support in the free drivers. I have faith in VIA.
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
makes you wonder, what with intel and via and amd/ati opening their documentation etc, if it will get to the point in the near future where nvidia will be the only binary blob in regards to video drivers.
come to think of it, this trend is something similar to what happened with wifi a few years back. Everyone was using binary blobs, then atheros, ralink etc release specs and oss drivers. let us hope this pressures the remaining vendors to do the same.
Well, as one of the other respondants pointed out, once the docs are out there, it can benefit any operating system, but the point is that VIA wants Linux, in particular (and the technologies like X that operate with the Linux kernel) to better support their products. I think of the three, the one that is most likely to be directly used by the Linux kernel dev is the crypto engine documentation. I think there are kernel-space crypto block device drivers (LUKS - at least, I think it's kernel space; I suppose it might be implemented in user-space) which could be accellerated by the padlock engine. In fact, I think the kernel already has some support for the padlock - whenever I boot my laptop, on which I have used LUKS to encrypt my /home partition, I get a warning that the padlock engine was not found (of course, because I have an Intel Core2 Duo, so don't have padlock).
It's just a coincidence they came one after another, but I think companies are going to quickly realize that there's no benefit to keeping things locked up.
Suddenly they won't need to pay to write drivers, just release the documentation to write them (of course, it would be nice if they gave us a base). The OSS community will make the drivers more stable, cleaner, and faster. We will use the drivers for things they didn't imagine. All of this will save them money and sell their hardware (features added for free? added incentive to buy my stuff? sign me up!)
I think we may have reached critical mass, at least on the driver side.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Next step: Release the documentation for the display adapters please.
The open source drivers mostly can't handle the mpeg2/mpeg4 acceleration, and without that the Epias collapse when you try to watch some higher resolution video. That makes them quite unsuitable for living room usage, which is a shame because they could make excellent HTPCs. With better drivers the better Epia boards could handle HD video just fine..
I'm trying to run Ubunu on a VIA epia for some time now, but their graphics solution is as unstable as hell. There is either the binary driver from VIA itself, or the OS one, but both are not quite what you would expect. Now the question for me is: will it also affect the CN400 chipset (and especially the graphics driver)? Because 5 minutes of average uptime before the machine freezes is not workable. I do think the UniChrome Pro support packages are most important for VIA, the rest already seems to work pretty well.
It seems that each time that a company is on the ropes, they pledge OS support. It would be a good idea for companies to do something when they are not on the brink of extinction. VIA is in a tight spot. They're moving out of the chipset business, and since the eye of Intel is currently on the mobile CPU/chipset business, they can expect the Nazgul to come riding in pretty soon (I don't know too many old testament stories, which seem more appropriate for VIA).
They should have asked the OOXML people to help out.
There is no such thing as OS-specific hardware documentation. The released documentation enables all interested OS-writers/driver-writers to write compatible software.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Personally, I would say that hiring Harald Welte is a better indication of VIA's intentions than the release of documentation. Nobody in their right mind is going to hire the owner of GPL-Violations.org unless they are absolutely serious about Free Software.
Welte eats vendors for breakfast. Hiring him grants VIA instant credibility. If VIA drops the ball it is very likely to get crucified. Unless the executives at VIA have the intellect of fence posts this indicates a sea change for Free Software support from VIA.