S3 Graphics Fails At Delivering Linux Driver

Ashmash writes "Phoronix is running a story about S3 Graphics failing to provide Linux support for their Chrome 500 products even though they have announced in press releases going back months that there is Linux support. S3 Graphics has gone as far as advertising OpenGL 3.0 support for Linux and one of their representatives had promised a driver by last December. This situation has been going on for months, but there is no Linux driver at all for the Chrome 500 series."

Comments

Maybe it's time to help out

[morgan_greywolf]

It may be time to help out The Unichrome Project, which produces a driver that works with the older Unichrome and Chrome9 chipsets.

VIA doesn't have much of a history of helping the open source community with specs or source for its S3 graphics cards.

Re:S3 is still around?

[drinkypoo]

I wonder though, if their products are any good at all?

The Original Virge considerably predates the existence of nVidia and when it came out there was nothing even close. It didn't really speed anything up, but it gave a substantial boost to visual effects. It actually tended to come at a frame rate penalty vs. software renderers except on the fastest machines.

Unfortunately S3 never really went anywhere after that, tried valiantly to go out of business several times, and mostly produces shitty integrated graphics. I just did a Windows XP install on a system based around an ASUS motherboard with a VIA chipset and S3 integrated graphics. They seem to work, that's about my only experience with them these days. But certainly S3 has no graphics solutions which will impress anyone. They are solidly at the bottom of the budget bin.

Re:S3 is still around?

[hairyfeet]

The S3s aren't SUPPOSED to impress anyone...that simply isn't there purpose. I don't know why folks always bring up Nvidia when talking about S3 because they really aren't the same market at all. It is like bring up the Core 2 Quad when talking about a Geode CPU. The S3 is made to be a LOW COST integrated graphics solution. I believe the latest Chrome 5 bumps it up just enough to run Vista with Aero, but gaming isn't something ever meant to do on these chips.

I can say that I have built several office machine running Win2K/XP on S3 and they work quite nicely for that task. They don't generate a lot of heat and thus you can build a nice quiet office machine with it. But it really isn't the same market as ATI/Nvidia. It is the same market as the Intel 945, that is a low cost budget GPU for rendering desktop graphics. Although I believe the last two generations of S3 support offloading some video as well. But for what they do they really aren't bad chips. But I have to say that it is bad form IMHO to promise drivers and not deliver. If I was a Linux user I probably would avoid the company in the future.