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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."
I eagerly await any driver that is smaller and faster and takes up less resources than Creative's.
Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
Seriously, what possible financial/business gain is there to have creative hide these things? Are they really worried about other companies stealing their driver ideas for their hardware? I know graphics drivers can potentially (or used to anyways) have a large amount of optimized code that could _maybe_ be beneficial to competitors, but sound cards?
Perhaps this is a sign that Creative are fearing for their existence. I mean, with high quality onboard audio (7.1, dolby etc) now pretty much standard on even budget motherboards, aren't the days of buying a separate soundcard history now?
Other than musicians perhaps, I can't think that anyone, even gamers/power users would still consider a separate soundcard as a 'required' upgrade, or even necessary at all.
Just a shot in the dark, but maybe they had 3rd party stuff in the drivers and they couldnt legally GPL it...Dolby Digital, etc...and then they removed it now so they can? Just a guess.
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The same kind that would require using REGEDIT on windows. Screw that troll, linux is as ready as any other consumer OS on the market. The consumer mass just been too much hammered into that win32 thinking shape.
I agree with you. What bothers me is that I've seen this conversation about 50,000,000 times on this site:
A: Linux isn't very good at Foobar.
B: Windows is just as bad at Foobar!1!!!
Notice how person B totally and completely changed the subject while simultaneously missing the point. The point isn't how good Windows is at it; in fact, the original poster didn't even *mention* Windows 90% of the time this conversation happens. The point is that Linux isn't very good at Foobar and should be better at Foobar.
Mac OS X users don't constantly compare themselves to Windows; I could go on "macosxhints.com" and post, "wow, the interface for Spotlight in Finder sucks ass" and I won't get 47 replies that all read, "yeah, well, Windows search is worse!!11!." For some reason, the Linux community does that constantly. It's annoying, it should stop.
It's logically impossible to build an OS better than Windows if you only work on problems until you're "as good as Windows" at them. If the Linux cared about making a usable, supported, real alternative OS, they wouldn't do this constant penis-measuring about Windows and they'd start working on it.
End rant, sorry.
Comment of the year
How would someone afraid of the command line fix this kind of problem in Windows? If the user is the kind to be afraid of a command line, they are probably one of those users that need help when anything substantial goes wrong.
I bet said user would end up asking for help from someone else.
So, in light of that, how is it any different between Linux and Windows? Both have problems, and both can be a pain in the ass to fix.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...