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

S3 is still around?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

This is news to me...

Pretty bad form to promise drivers and not come up with them. I wonder though, if their products are any good at all? Last S3 stuff (Virge, I think) that I saw was easily crushed by Nvidia and ATI.

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?

[Roman Mamedov]

I'd consider S3 Savage and development of S3TC (licensed by Microsoft and others, renamed DXTC, still lives to this day in both ATI and nVidia cards) to be their moment of fame, and not Virge, which was also known as the first "graphics decelerator". :)

Re:S3 is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, S3's biggest recognition in my life was playing Heavy Gear 2 at a LAN. Some putz was putting mortars on us from way the Hell at the far end of the map with impunity. After allegations of cheating and threats of beating, we all found out his Savage4 didn't support prerry much any way of rendering distance fog. He had an infinite viewline.

After further allegations of cheating and rigging, we found out that not only did he not intentionally arrange a corner case to get this screwup, there were no drivers from S3 that could fix it, and S3 had stopped making drivers for his card.

Re:S3 is still around?

[0xygen]

I was cursed with a Savage4 after having a Voodoo 3 for ages... it quickly became known in our household as the Savage Whore, for the sheer number of times it got fucked one way or another.

The drivers were absymal, the hardware regularly locked up and it got replaced real fast.

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.

S3 has always been a synonym for "avoid"

[Alioth]

For Linux users, even back to the early 1990s, S3 has been a synonym for "don't buy this graphics card". Even back then, they didn't release specs for their graphics cards, and they didn't even support VESA modes for graphics mode so their cards couldn't be used at all for X.

At least the other two closed graphics cards makers do supply drivers for Linux.

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.

Let's raise this barn!

[malevolentjelly]

I think this simply calls for a really long, over-promising and under-delivering open source driver project in the tradition of Nouveau or anything in DRI produced without commercial support. I look forward to a series of unstable and unusable "releases" which may someday, years from now, result in a shoddy but roughly functional driver.

Maybe some *prominent* linux developers should take some time out of their respective minor IT and sysadmin jobs to create and fully support their very first OpenGL 3.0 driver for this moderately unpopular architecture.

It'll be like a Little Rascals movie, but with more facial hair.