Creative GPLs X-Fi Sound Card Driver Code

An anonymous reader writes "In a move that's a win for the free software community, Creative Labs has decided to release their binary Linux driver for the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi and X-Fi Titanium sound cards under the GPL license. This is coming after several failed attempts at delivering a working binary driver and years after these sound cards first hit the market."

Comments

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been waiting to hear this for years.

Re:Cool

[giantweevil]

As have I.

Now I have to go get my X-Fi out of my brother's computer.

This should be (fun|bloody)

At last!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great news! With proper sound card driver support maybe 2009 will finally be the year of the Linux desktop!

Re:At last!

[meringuoid]

The experience has all the appeal of root canal without sedation.

There's your problem you see. It should be user canal, and you sudo to get elevated privileges as and when needed.

Re:At last!

[wikinerd]

If you have to edit a text file, your software is not ready for (l)users.

Who wants lusers using the same OS as you? One of the reasons I use GNU/Linux (Debian) is precisely because the user communities are free of lusers, so that I know that whenever I post a message to a mailing list I will get answers from fellow power users.

Lusers tend to infect a software project with their stupidity and naivety. They tend to click on any link they see in their emails, so virus writters target whatever OS the lusers use most. The developers of a piece of software also tend to make their software more suitable for stupid users because they tend to think that accomodating more users is a good thing, thus driving power users away. Unfortunately this currently happens with some GNU/Linux distros. You just have to see that many newer GNU/Linux software projects only work with X and have no command line support, and many websites don't work with text browsers anymore.

Whatever software we use is not only determined by technical merit but also by social factors. We want to use software which is different from anyone else, particularly the lusers and the closed source world. If our OS requires interaction with a command line and editing obscure text files, then we can know for sure that we will never have to deal with a luser in our support mailing lists, etc.

Thus, user-unfriendliness is a filter that we can use intentionally to keep non-powerusers away from our communities. If GNU/Linux ever becomes the preferred OS of lusers I am going to switch to OpenBSD, and if that too gets infected by lusers I will write my own.

Re:At last!

[Eunuchswear]

Whenever I saved, my changes would just vanish.

Uh, maybe try again not using the LiveCD this time?

Re:At last!

[atraintocry]

I don't think there's much about a fairly stable distro that prevents a repair shop, help line, or techie relative from knowing the ins and outs well enough to help. And there's variation between distros but it's not *crazy*, that is, if you felt comfortable working on a Debian box, you could handle one with Ubuntu, etc. Those two would cover most of the customers.

Yeah, all the software comes from different places, but that's not unique to linux. Assuming someone sticks to a reasonable set of software and it's all from the Canonical repositories, you could easily have a setup that's capable of being worked on by someone who didn't do the actual installation.

If things seem to be FUBAR you could always wipe & reinstall whatever distro, and say they had one of those pesky linux viruses :D

Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can play all those great games that got built on top of the open-source ID engines!

Obligatory bash reference

[AcidPenguin9873]

http://bash.org/?24262

What!?

[Bootarn]

Creative releases source code?

/me looks out the window, searching for flying pigs.

What people will do with it is interesting

[symbolset]

I gave up on their products so many years ago I had to look up what an X-Fi sound card was.

But yeah, cool.