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Creative to build Linux 3D drivers
James Hall writes "Jon Taylor recently posted a message to the linux-ggi list indicating that he is going to be working for Creative Labs to build both Linux sound drivers for the Live cards as well as drivers (binary only) for all the graphics cards Creative makes (including cards based around 3DFX, nVidia, 3DLabs, and Rendition chipsets).
The message has been circulating around (I found it on the opengl-gamedev-l mailing list) but the original can be found
here. "
haha I emailed creative a few times and politely hinted that they suck......After buying a sblive and finding out it's not supported i was quite peeved
I supose that's a good thing, but I'd prefer it if Creative opened up their specs so we could all program the thing. It seems unfair that we can buy hardware, but not be given the information to use our own hardware.
Open hardward standards are just as important as open software standards.
Which begs the question, which cards (in
particular sound) have open specs? I'd buy
one of these over a non-open spec model each
and every time.
Pressure needs to be applied to both Creative,
and the companies that supply the components
fot the hardware -- e.g. nVidia for graphics,
3DFX, EMU etc.
First thing i'm going to do is to reverse engineer the driver... gnagna...
Agreed.. I will always lean tword the free driver..
Atmittadly, I'm a hypocrit
(and I can't spell either)
I've worked on a binary driver (NDA) for a device to run on linux.
(anybody hiring Free software programmers out there? (Particularly in the Mid West))
I see all the problems it creates...
and the frustration it causes me when I can't share it with folks who could help point out problems..
It's annoying from both sides of the table..
I will always purchase from the company that offers the open driver, before the one with a binary.
So, while I understand and am pleased with the spirit behind this move, be fore-warned Creative if anybody else opens their video/sound hardware specs... You will never get my purchase (and I imagine others think the same way).
Free software is always superior to Open Source and NDA binarys.
.... then don't buy their products. If you can live with closed binary drivers, then buy their products.
I still prefer my SoundScape..
i was happy to hear that CL released the tweaked quake2 driver.... and now this... i would just like to say that i am pleased with all of my creative products because of their continued support of each and every one...
The notion of a sound driver is pretty clear, but what exactly does 'video driver' mean? Will they write a X server extension or OpenGL support or what? The term 'driver' is a bit vague.
Hey, What about us who are were unlucky enought to buy diamond or STB cards! I own an STB with RIVA128 chiuipset/8 MB/PCI and I want to see 3D support in Linux! If I only knew that Creative was the one who was going to make drivers first ...
Hey, What about us who are were unlucky enought to buy Diamond or STB cards! I own an STB with RIVA128 chipset/8 MB/PCI and I want to see 3D support in Linux! If I only knew that Creative was the one who was going to make drivers first ...
From the ALSA page:
I receive many E-mails in last days if Sound Blaster Live! support will be added to ALSA drivers. Unfortunately Creative Labs, Inc doesn't released programming datesheets for this soundcard yet. It seems that they want sign from driver developers some NDA licence which doesn't allow distribute freely source code which is for us unacceptable (it simply breaks GPL licence under which is ALSA driver developed).
I remember reading this a month or so ago on the ALSA page. As I understood it, ALSA was having nothing to do with the Soundblaster Live until they permitted them to open source and release the driver under GPL. Since this thing they're talking about now is still binary-only, what's the difference?
I think we should go and ask for NetBSD drivers
for SB Live. After they say they will do that, then we should ask for FreeBSD drivers and BeOS
drivers! We would help our free software friends
using *BSD and maybe give Creative Labs people something to think about.
at least not the specs for the 3D hardware. Those specs are owned by nVidia, 3DLabs, 3dfx, etc. Creative Labs has no say in IP freedom in graphics.
Sound is another matter. I'm under the understanding that Creative owns the IP for their sound products. THERE you have a point.
That is major bullshit man. Somebody's testis deserve to be ripped out - slowly.
Yeah but the DXR2's TV-out has been de-Macrovised under windoze for some time with Remote Selector :)
Good thing too since my TV hates that stuff.
Well, it's nice that they'll have Linux drivers in some form but without fans they run too hot. They should have a fan like Asus' on their TNT board.
But that's what would happen if creative release a binary only driver. Weather the video is just written to a particular place in memory after it is decoded or straight to the monitor (assuming a video passthrough cable). Either way this can be distrubuted in a binary program/library which would be hardware specific.
So "Jezus man" translates into "They really"?
Don't get your hopes up too much. Writing a
bunch of poorly-defined and heavily political
"design" documents on the GGI mailing lists is
not a qualification for doing 3D
drivers for real hardware.
Writing good 3D drivers for one chipset is
a project measured in programmer-years for
people with long experience in this area. One
person at Creative is not going to be able to
do more than nibble at this problem no matter
how talented.
Furthermore, GGI is unproved, immature, and its
developers have show very limited understanding
of how 3D hardware actually works. Besides which
there are virtually no apps for it.
Boring though it may be to people who insist on
ignoring established standards with a long track
record of success, accelerated OpenGL and GLX
for XFree86 is coming. This is the future of
Linux 3D.
Will someone please tell Diamond to do the same for all their freaking cards, especially the 3Dfx ones.
Like giving out specs to help the X-Windows movement!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Anstinus
uldris@rpi.edu
Specs are available for virtually all 2D graphics cards out there.
There are virtually no specs available for any of the 3D graphics cards.
Most of the cheap sound cards have open specs.
Virtually none of the professional cards have open specs.
Congrats on the job. Being a Linux programmer is starting to pay off.
I think the NDA's come from the chipmaker, not the board maker. If the NDA states the boardmaker can only release drivers for Winders, then these plans won't happen.
Whatever rumours have been floating around regarding a Nvidia wrapper, there is still nothing concrete. The developer states in the msg:
1) He does not speak for creative;
2) He has not seen the nVidia spec.
But I will remain optimistic and keep an eye out for the new website.
There is the Banshee flat framebuffer
driver on his page http://www.glide.xxedgexx.com/status.html
It works with the creative voodoo banshee card
( they're all similar, anyway)
So, what I'd like to know is, is creative
actually going to produce another implementation,
or just take whatever the 3dfx-deal with Daryll
produces...
The high point of this week was buying a CNet Pro110(b) ethernet card (a 10/100 card for under $20), and finding that it came with a GPLed Linux kernel driver. I'm going to continue buying hardware from companies like CNet, and recommending companies like that to others.
What Creative is doing is better than what they were doing before, but I'd still rather have free software.
Maybe when you install the Alpha or PowerPC drivers?
Either Alsa will need to change to LGPL to allow for a binary driver, Creative will have to copy the ALSA API into their own driver (from the sound of it they plan to have a binary code module that does all the hardware interface and a wrapper that would make it plug in via OSS or ALSA, the wrapper being Open Source), or perhaps just emulate the OSS Lite drivers in the current kernel distribution.
Agreed. I was subscribed to the ggi mailing list last fall, and saw proposals for ggi3d that included stuff like not including texture mapping or z-buffering in the API.
However, there is still some positive things about this: I believe Creative has an OpenGL license, and they ship OpenGL with some of their boards. Porting an OpenGL ICD from Windows should be easier than writing it from scratch (and easier than writing Mesa hardware driver from scratch).
Finally, I do hope that eventually HW OEMs will be the ones providing drivers for their cards, as is the norm on Windows.
"have fun designing something new"
As opposed to not having fun implementing something that works?
:-)
It would be nice if there were a webpage which
listed various hardware company and how much
Linux support they give. They would be ranked
and scored like as follows:
* Wants nothing to do with Linux
* Will give programming specs under NDA
* Will give programming specs freely
* Provide closed source drivers
* Provides open source driver
* Provides open source driver and support
>Furthermore, GGI is unproved, immature, and its
;-(
>developers have show very limited understanding
>of how 3D hardware actually works. Besides which
>there are virtually no apps for it.
This is classical FUD, but this time from
one member of the Open Source Community
He did not say that he'll write only GGI drivers.
Furthermore, GGI is not immature and unproven
and how the hell do you come to the conclusion that the GGI developers have a very limited understanding of how 3D hardware actually works?
Yeah, obsolete, bloated standard. Move everthing
to the monolithic XServer and hinder innovation.
Conservativism rules!
"Besides, the version I've heard about GGI in the standard kernel was that Linus didn't want them in the 2.1.x/2.2.x series because it was too immature to be stable before 2.2.0"
There we have it...the biggest of the big lies on
which the whole GGI project is built. Boiled down:
"Linus promises to look at it (and/or put it in the kernel) when it gets 'good enough'"
Linus has never promised any such thing...and if you've read his recent posts on the subject of video drivers, you'll see he's NEVER been MORE ANTI-GGI.
Take a look at who these GGI people are and what they want...they're game-playing X haters.
GGI and KGI codebases are going to wind up on the scrap heap next to MGR, a.out, and SVGAlib. This aint gonna be the way we do graphics in the future.
Notice that they didn't race and jump on the TNT bandwagon...
Most of their profits come because they sell alot of cards for low end PCs (aka the sub $1000 market). I believe alot of this comes through OEM contracts also.
Sure they aren't the 3D speed demons, but you gotta give them credit from a business standpoint. They are playing the long-term game and doing quite well at it.
I think it is great news about Creative writing drivers for Linux. This will then give encouragement for games companies to support Linux and release shrinkwrapped games simultanious with Win95/98 and DOS.
:-)
I agree with the fact that Open Source for drivers is'nt *so* important. Trade secrets are intended as just that - secret. It is the applications that we need to have Open Source to see that they are coded correctly and are as stable as possible.
Long live Linux
I posted an open letter to Creative here when the request for an employee was posted and my reply from Jacob Hawley was little other than a side step from what policy the drivers would take. Now it seems they will all be closed except where they are already open.
Those of you who think this is a very good thing are simply mistaken. While it may mean you yourself get to run a certain card that you already have, it will do nothing to safe guard your future.
Linux, being an open system and one that many users compile on their own system for optimisation does not lend itself well to having precomiled binaries atached to it. Aside from the non portability problems and being at the mercy of Creative if you change your CPU, it also means the drivers will not be fully optimised for your hardware. Unless Creative wish to supply every combinination and permutation of binary compiled against every other option this would not be possible.
What we will see is a huge influx of lowest common denominator compiles that perform poorly in comparison, perhaps even causing security problems in some cases. Other companies will follow suit and when new kernels or CPUs arrive will simply say "We do not support X product & Linux any more so you'll have to buy a new card". This puts us all at their whim again. This would be analogous to having to run Windows 95 becuase your sound card is not supported under NT. Sound familiar? Linux moves much faster than Windows so the problem would be magnified here.
Personally I'd much rather have open drivers where I can keep the peripheral until I choose to upgrade it.
We should care little about what trade secrets they contain (and frankly nothing in a 3D driver is very new since all the 3D routines are as old as the moon) nor who else may get ideas from the drivers and make better cards. This is, if you recall, what GNU was about in the first place. If companies like Creative wish to expand their profit margins by covering Linux, they should play it by our terms and open their driver code where they have authority to do so and lobby for it where they do not. If they do that, then they win the Linux race as they wish.
If they do not open them, they still may win out but we, the users will lose everything we have gained to date.
Hopefully, if they will not take the open path, someone else will and the first person to do anything usually takes 99% of the credit and marketing hype, right Linus?
I urge everyone with a Creative card to firstly thank Creative for their work to date but more importantly to urge them to take a positive stance toward support fully open drivers.
Phill Hugo
Department of Computer Science
University of York
England
plh102@york.ac.uk
Forget it. The good news on the video4linux list
though is Matrox appear prepared to do the right
thing.
BOYCOTT THEM! They don't realize how much our freedom mens to us. If they can't provide drivers under a resonable license or release the specs, we shouldn't buy their cards at all.
The company is called ATI. They limit their 3D api to Windows only, regardless of NDA or anything else, and are openly hostile to Linux.
Also, in spite of claims to the contrary, nVidia has a similar limitation posted on their website, Windows only, no intention to release information for any Unix support, etc.
Clearly, many developers have signed NDA's with these manufactuers, yet there have been no solid timeframes or intentions posted anywhere (including this story) indicating imminent support in Linux for the nVidia Riva/TNT chipset.
I hope I'm proved wrong, but I will question all claims of support for 3D acceleration under Linux until timelines (even rough ones) are posted.
One could argue that 3Dlabs helped GGI with Permedia2 support, but from what I know Mesa and Glide (or something "Glide-like") are the current trend.
Only one company, IMO, truly supports Linux -- 3Dfx. I have no relationship with them, but that's the way it is.
So, I continue to question this post! It has no meat!
What about all of us who have the Creative Webcam II??? There is still no word of support for that, and I know a lot of people who have this piece of hardware and want to use it with LINUX.
o KGI is dead, buried gone at least in its current
form - GGI is a different matter (the user layer
is very nice)
o There is work being done funded by people like
linux vendors and run by Precision Insight to do
real "direct render" 3D and MesaGL stuff for XFree
4.0. Don't bug the XFree people about this yet
though.
Direct render is the stuff SGI use to make their
3D go like a rocket. It may involve some very small clean kernel modules but not so much a KGI like layer.
I'm personally disappointed with this 'oh binary
will do' attitude. Be assured that people wanting
Linux support and running binary modules are going
to get pointed straight at the binary module makers. We cannot support or debug a kernel with
some non source modules. Hopefully creative will work out where and what they can do the open way.
Until they do I'm going to avoid their cards just
in case they fail to deliver.
I've pointed Jon at the direct render work, so with any luck if things work out we'll get open
free direct render in XFree 4.something, source
modules and stable code.
Vendors its up to you, if you want to sell me or
many other people cards we need documentation. Not
neccessarily to notionally valuable 3D support
libraries - just tell us how to make the hardware
blast polygons and the community will do the rest.
Alan
I'd say it's the kernel we _need_ source for. An application that fails is not the end of the world, but when the kernel fails it takes everything with it. If the source code for everything in the kernel is not available there is no way it can be debugged. CL's driver can bring the whole system down and there is nothing you can do about it.
CL make their money from selling cards, not from device drivers. Releasing the source code for a driver will not take anything away from them. With a GPL'd driver they should get a better driver cheaper and also support for many more platforms. Do you think CL is going to support Alpha or UltraSparc or PPC or whathaveyou? I think not.
If they are not willing to write and release a driver they should at least release enough documentation to enable a driver to be written.
I say the kernel should be Free. It is a great mistake to allow non-free modules in the kernel.
/Not the original poster
What I see as the primary issue is that a driver lives at ring 0. This means it has complete access to the computer. Any bugs there, and you have an unstable computer. The best way to root out such bugs is to have a lot of people look it over, make suggestions, and send in patches. You don't get that with binary only drivers.
Sorry, go back to Win9X/NT BSOD if binary-only is what you want.
You could add Advansys to that list of companies.
They also have a supported driver in the standard linux kernel. I think its been there since 1.3.something
No relations whatsoever, I just bought a used card and was gladly surprised when i checked their site for drivers.
Some of the hooks KGI needs happen to be there for
the frame buffer consoles. The basic "do all
the acceleration in the kernel" is dead. SGI figured this about 1993. In fact the SGI engineers
like Kilgard were amazingly clueful. Stuff the
PC world is just figuring out is history to them
Alan
I've gotten responses to fan mail, actually. While they are not exactly the same sort of thing they are roughly related.
Open specs only mean improved driver support, not a need for new hardware.
A video driver is exactly the same thing as a sound driver, except that it drives video hardware instead of sound hardware.
If you had bothered to read the original message, these will be drivers for KGIcon. So, you need a special X server (as I understand it) for KGIcon. Hope this helps....
...idiot.
Firstly, most hardware manufactorers will gladly license their chips under NDAs meaning they really are not so concerned with keeping them secret but that they want more money from their existance. As such any rival can OEM their chips under NDA and see the specs.
Allowing the world to without use them without NDAs means the company has a good name and brings little to no disadvantage. If a rival wanted specs very badly, they would be able to get them without the NDA by reverse engineering or bribery.
In truth very few hardware specifications truely need NDAs to protect them since there is little to protect except the exact workings of a chip (ie register mappings). It is merely a business practice that has come to plague the world of hardware to our disadvantage.
Phill Hugo
Ask yourself: Which is better, no support or closed source support?
If you said no support than by all means don't buy from Crative, help reverse engineer the drivers they will provide, do what you want...
The important thing is its a step in in the right direction, and as far as I can tell a good thing. Maybe one day all drivers will be open source but I don't care if they are or not as long as they work.
-Anonymous Loser
Well, you have to remember that Creative Labs already has full source of working, accellerated drivers for Windows. Win9x / NT is not such a different platform than linux that the porting of one driver would take an unreasonable amount of time, even for just one programmer if he/she was sufficiently experienced.
I don't quite follow what you're saying.
We already have stable, complete drivers for them. My Voodoo2 works just great under Linux.
Honestly, I believe X-Window is a wonderful product. The network support in X still amazes me, although I'm well versed in how it works. 10MB is nothing these days. Remember, most of the code executed by the X server is in a small fraction of that 10MB. OpenGL used in conjunction with X-Window has plenty of mileage left in it. Mind you, I'm talking about "real work", not games, but those should be just fine in a larger-than-fullscreen X window (to keep window borders out of the way, e.g. like Blender does).
If their Linux drivers suck as bad as their NT
drivers do, they can keep em'.
peace
Chipset manufacturers don't like to release register level information for several reasons and they're the people who hold the power in this matter.
Cloning is one issue; for example, if nVidia had enough information they could write a driver or build silicon which emulated a 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics (or a Voodoo2 albeit with lower fillrate). This is why 3Dfx guard their register-level information with NDAs.
There's also the issue that the silicon itself often does tricks of one kind of another and register-level information can reveal that. Some (consumer level but not PC) 3D parts are programmed using a VLIW philosophy and if you had access to that instruction set it would explain a lot about how the internals of the chip works.
This isn't really an issue in terms of technology but of price. If a company can build a part for $10 which does the job (or almost the job) of a $20 part obviously they have an advantage and will wish to keep others from finding out how they did it.
They don't need to get the drivers distributed with Red Hat. All they need to do is make them modular and put them on the driver CD that comes with the card.
If they ever do decide to make the drivers open source, they should not even consider GPL'ing them. Drivers should be under something like the X license, so that they can be used in the other open source operating systems--not just Linux.
Why more (and not just equally?)
Bad for Sun, good for the consumer.
Actually open source drivers would work both ways for hardware companies. Once they latch onto the idea then we will have better drivers, hardware designs and alot of choice.
-kojak
you obviously believe everything you read. Diamond isnt dead, if you read their press releases now and then, you would realize they took some charge-offs from buying a motherboard manufacturer, and other costs to become more comptetive and keep less raw inventory on hand, and move to real-time supply to meet channel demand.
this is a message board for news, and other technical issues, not gossip, if you want gossip, go watch springer
Sure thing. Anybody can choose to be a slave if he really wants to be one. Have fun when your kernel panics and Creative tech support is busy.
P.S. You're running Linux because it's k3wl, right?
The card seems nice. I bought mine from http://www.chilipepperpc.com/ for under $20 (dirt cheap for a nice 10/100 card).
-pmitros
Yea .. I thought it was pretty cool too. That is ... yikes!
until I saw the price tag: $410
You can get an SBLive (full, not value) for $122 at buycomp.com. I bought this board and love it. It comes with an extra panel which features more I/O ports. I plug in my MIDI instruments via a round MIDI port instead of the MIDI/joystick port.
If you are an NT user, the software bundle is interesting. This card is probably the best consumer-level soundcard on the market. I am using the four speaker output with the Cambridge Surround Speakers, wow!
If they will only make drivers for BeOS, the next true OS.
(Dammit I did not mean to submit as AC)
X is an enormous resource hog, as everyone is agreed.
Instead of focusing on making it less bloated and more modular (and doing so fast), they are adding more and more features, most of which aren't useful or accepted by the programmers (like DGA).
X is the biggest stability risk on Linux, and root programs can be as harmful as buggy kernel modules.
The biggest obstacle to Linux on the desktop is the vast waste of memory and other processor time of X. X offers very little functionality for a desktop system, and the networking stuff is inefficient.
The solution: XFree should focus on making a smaller and more usable package, and leave the direct graphics stuff up to GGI.
Or: Implement only GGI/KGIcon drivers (which should be highly portable as well), and run X via Xggi.
What about for people who don't like the windowed interface? I love GUIs, but absolutely abhor windows (small 'w'). GGI would have been a nice alternative for me.
True -- X is still a problem until it can
run cleanly without ANY root capabilities.
- RF (dfelker@cnu.edu)
This is another good oportunity to
encourage linus and the other kernelteam
dudes to put the kgi driver as an option
in the kernel... im awaiting the officialy
inclusion of kgi in linux!
(btw: the X vs KGI dilema is absurd, x can
run on top of kgi without the suid problems..)
Have a look at this page:
It tries to define a standard base for linux games, and has support of some major (and minor) game companies (author told me).
I don't know about the GGI developers, but a straight OpenGL driver seems like a much better route to go. The world doesn't need another 3d API.
I have high hopes for GGI, but the libGGI3d part scares me.
On the other hand, GGI is definately the way to go for 2d.
why-because it's actually better than windows
there will be BeOS drivers for sb live, aureal vortex and emagic just to name a few
ATI would never jump on the TNT bandwagon. ATI designs their own chips, boards, and has a large sales force to target OEMs. They do everything in house, they don't buy 3rd party chips like nVidia RivaTNT's.
The reason ATI makes so much money has very little to do with technology (99% of their stuff sucks except the new Rage 128 looks quite good especially @32-bit) Talk to PC OEMs and they will tell you that ATI has an excellent sales and support structure. They know how to do accurate product forecasting and can always deliver parts to their customers. Even if a smaller company has something 10X faster it may be too risky for Compaq or Dell to go with them if they can't get parts when they need them.
That's a dangerous position. Why not use Windows? They've got drivers. Or is it the Unix thing that you like? Solaris is now free. Isn't that 'good enough'.
Why do you like Linux? Because it's technically superiour? How do you think it got that way? Sure, maybe only 9% are willing to hack the drivers, but the result will most likely be better than anything the companies will offer. Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why Samba is better at SMB than Windows. Should a bunch of hackers be able to out-code the creator of the protocol?
X is perfect for desktop and I really like the network transparancy features but it is absolutely not suitable for games. Where the hell did you see people playing Quake in a window?!?!? It *must* be full-screen and it *must* have a more direct video access then what X allows in order to be fast.
If you are concerned about stability, you always have an option of NOT compiling ggi. That's what I'd do on my server - ggi is useless there. But on my desktop (or workstation, whichever way you prefer), I like to play games once in a while and it's a pain in the ass to have to reboot to windows for that. GGI MUST EXIST!!!
I play Quake2, software rendered, in an X Window on my P1-233MMX all the time, and it's great.
There's NOTHING wrong with X.
DG
Why oh why do people still believe that the X server uses up 16MB of memory just because 'top', 'ps' or whatever shows the RSS size as 16M ?
Ever heard of mmap, guys ? The X Server mmap's the whole framebuffer memory. If you've got an 8MB graphics card, the X Server will mmap 8MB which are always resident. THIS IS NOT from the main system memory. So quite a significant amount of the X Server's large RSS is due to the fact that the framebuffer size shows up there. It's anything but bad if the RSS for your X server is 24MB if you've got one of that wonderful 16MB graphics cards.
Think twice before calling X bloated. It is not - it just shows that numbers aren't all, and don't trust your kernel unless you know the internals.
> many people of the musical persuasion are uncomfortable going somewhere on the Internet to download their drivers.
why should this be the case?....I wasnt aware that being of 'musical persuasion' meant being uncomfortable with technology.....
besides...we're talking about Linux drivers...if you're uncomfortable downloading something from the Internet....chances are Linux scares the sh*t out of you....
Geez, am I the only one who reads the source before posting instead of just the little summary?? Go read the post. I beleive the ports are not just for creative products. A mesa port will be made, etc. In other words, I think if you have an NVIDIA card, you should be happy.
Why would the specs for how to get the bit stream from the DVD player to the decoder card be under NDA from the DVD consortium (or whoever)? They didn't build the decoder chip, nor the board it is on. The decryption should be in the chip, so it's not as if we would get the specs for that anyway.
This doesn't really apply much to the SB Live!, since Creative makes the chipset, but for their proposed video drivers, this is important. How much do you want to bet that their drivers will only work with their boards? The last thing Linux needs is x different closed source drivers for Y chipset for boards from different vendors, all that could be harboring their own bugs. We need to be convincing 3Dfx, nVidia, and 3DLabs to release specs, not the board maufacturers that use their chipsets.
I think he'll probably be easily coerced to provide compiled Mesa GLide-like "plugins" for FreeBSD, which would be a wonderful thing!
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
It is all very nice to have GGI drivers, but Linus has stated that they will never be included in the standard kernel.
What about X drivers so the rest of us can use them? (these would also be portable to other free unices)
I'll settle for a binary only driver for my Encore DXR2 card. As long as I don't have to reboot to windows just to watch a movie, I'm happy.
This
Red Hat won't ship binary-only drivers, and they are 50% of the Linux market. SuSE has no problem with binary-only drivers (they license the non-free OSS as part of SuSE Linux), but their presence in the U.S. is still not very large (though growing). Caldera has no problem with binary drivers but Caldera sells into business markets, not into the kinds of markets that use sound cards or 3D drivers. Slackware? Debian? Forget it!
In short, I fear that Creative is going to find that having Linux drivers is no good for their sales, since nobody is going to include those drivers with their distributions and many people of the musical persuasion are uncomfortable going somewhere on the Internet to download their drivers. Is the Linux community going to get a black eye over this? You bet! When Creative discontinues Linux support because "Linux people don't use sound cards" (as verified by their FTP download logs, showing negligible downloads of their drivers), it'll make all sorts of other companies currently interested in Linux take a step backwards.
-- Eric
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
To sell even more hardware to more people? I'm referring to the free-unix community in general here, not just Linux/x86. This includes *BSD as well as Linux. Creative's bottom line is "sell hardware", and if it becomes obvious that substantial increases in sales would occur if they opened driver sources, they might be persuaded to do so (or be pushed out of competition by a company that does).
Posted by The Apocalyptic Lawnmower:
(that's cool in Dutch)
Hmm too bad it's not open-source, but it's a step in the right direction. It's a good thing companies finally dare to step on the Linux platform. With the rate of companies committing at least somewhat to Linux, I dare to say that we have gained a critical mass. Not that anyone noticed that yet.
Anyway, as always, only buy hardware that supports you - whether it be just Linux, open source, or all the way - free software. Make vendors know your needs. Marketing droids only understand sales figures.
- ze Apocalyptic Lawnmower
If 3dfx had allowed Daryll Strauss to open source his drivers and had released their hardware specs openly, we would probably have stable working drivers for Voodoo, Voodoo2 and Banshee...
I hope someone can convince Creative and the other hardware companies to release the specs to thier hardware... They make money selling hardware, not selling drivers...
That's all well and good. Now where are the Matrox G200 3D drivers? :)
F0 07 C7 C8
TedC
"Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with time travel, you never can tell." -- Doctor Who
Androids of Tara?
Woops, that was me. Sorry about that. Be nice if Slashdot forced a preview and handled invalid usernames/passwords a bit more gracefully....
I agree 100% ... I won't be buing any creative product for which there isn't a 100% free driver ... maybe I wills kip their products entierly ... which has been my policy to date ... so nothing will change ... same with 3D under linux ...
imagine you buy a car ... the car company doesn't tell you how to drive it ... you have to use THEIR driver .... you can't hire a different driver ... and you can't drive it yourself ... that's what happens ....
what they should give out is the interface ... NOT the implementation ... the product is the hardware ... not the software ... not to mention that your understanding of patent laws is not that good ... if they have something patented ... they can make it completely public ... no-one can copy it .... plus if you already made something public ... no one can patent it ...
creative should make all the INTERFACES to their hardware public ... and provide sample drivers and smale source code ...
if I were to argument like you ... "CPU companies should keep their instruction sets secret and only provide you with a compiler ..." ... I mean they don't want a bunch of broken compilers ... and they don't want others to discover how their cpu works .... and car companies should not allow you to drive your car by yourself ... you probably aren't as good of a driver ...
your logic is extremely flawed
Support from companies like Creative (especially Creative) will go a long way toward helping drag the game industry to our Operating System of Choice.
I hope they do it soon, one of the only reasons I still have to deal with windows is all of my sound apps. The Live is actually quite an excellent sound card for $200 and I look forward to the day when hard disk recording and sound design programs start to appear for Linux, They can definitely benefit from its inherent stability.
I just wanna see all boxes in computer stores from now on with a little penguin in the corner with a "Designed for Linux", maybe we could rid those designed for windows 95/98 stickers too? :)
Accelerated drivers for my Nvidia TNT. Now that will truely rock. I just hope my STB AGP TNT card will be able to use them. If not, I'll just have to make room for my Creative labs PCI one.
:) :) :)
HAPPY HAPPY, JOY JOY
Big step in the right direction. Yeah... open would be nice... but we can always revers engineer the stuff for an oss driver if we want one bad enough... this is approaching the much needed time when all drivers are released for linux alongside bigger commercial counterpart OS's. Thats important.
Yuck.
They're better than nothing.
That's not saying a lot though.
As a community, it's our role to say, "Thank you for the support" - but not leave it at that. Long term, we want open source.
Linux plays by different rules than Windows. Hardware vendors will eventually need to realize this, or lose market share and profits.
I hope the community never comes to accept binary-only drivers. At least we can be sure that Debian never will.
Cheers,
- Jim
Yes, at http://www.cnetusa.com.
Yeah, that's right. Just keep pissing on people's work while calling them jerks.
BTW, would you care to sign your name to that?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
You may like to program, but trust me, you really don't want to program driver level code unless you have to. If you did, you'd have a program that only supported *one* sound card, and would require significant reworking to support any other sound card. Linux is (imho) all about portability, which means programming to a well defined API, or library. In most cases that means programming to the OSS or ALSA api, or some wrapper thereof. You think "oh, having the specs would be so great."? Study the specs for hardware out there that you *can* get the docs for. Be it hard drives, parallel ports, whatever. See if that's *really* where you want to spend your time programming. If so, contact companies out there that are in need of Linux drivers, and offer to help them support Linux. The worst that will happen is they'll say no.
Personally, I'm more than happy to leave the driver level stuff to the people who make the card. I long for the day I can buy a hot new video card, install the custom accelerated X server (or module) off of the CD, and be up and running. Same for a sound card. I personally prefer to play with my system as a whole, and not have to worry about compiling or hand reviewing everything that's on it. I'd never have time for Quake if I did. =)
Now if that's your thing, more power to you. There was a time when I was a bit twiddler, poking values to io ports, and polling for status returns. But, most people have no need for the intimate details of hardware specs. It's not something that *has* to be out there. More importantly, if driver level programming is your thing, get out where you can exercise it.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
"Safeguarding" that information by hiding the interface specs is pointless, because it's only a matter of time before the binaries are disassembled or even decompiled. There hasn't been much happening on that front in the past because we've had sources for everything, but if binary drivers become commonplace then you can bet your last dollar that we'll have top-notch tools to do the required work for us soon.
There are at least three very solid reasons why this will (and must) happen:
1. The kernel is not a protected space and this makes it extremely sensitive to programming faults (driver experts are not necessarily total kernel experts, and most are human too). Faults need to be fixed rapidly, and corporate teams cannot always do that because the resource may be committed to another project. Furthermore, if the fault is actually a design fault then corporates may not be keen to acknowledge that they've made a large balls'up, and sometimes don't even acknowledge that there *is* a fault if it's not a showstopper. That is not adequate.
2. The lack of access protection in the kernel makes it a security risk to have unreviewed code there. It is really easy to pop a cracker-infected module into the kernel and unwittingly compromise the operating system's security in just about any way the cracker likes. This is so scary that this reason alone is enough to make binary drivers complete anathema for many.
3. You buy powerful I/O hardware to offload some of the CPU's work onto it, not for the manufacturer to offload some of his hardware processing onto your CPU. If your CPU seems to be spending too many cycles in the driver, the first port of call is to see what the driver is doing.
These are powerful reasons. Manufacturers like Creative don't seem to understand these driving forces at all at present, but in time they will. They will have no option, because fighting the way that the community does things will be commercial suicide in a market that they are trying to attract, not disaffect.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Recently I've been contemplating sound and video cards to replace the stuff that came on-board my new AMD system at home, and this certainly helps with my decision. Great news.
#19845
Zanshin at www.planetquake.com/gldojo
if you care,
took Creative to task for their disastrous NT drivers for Live, and supposed support for that platform. Aside from that,their SB 16 NT drivers as of this last summer were _STILL_ full of bugs! For an integrated chip on a dual processor Tyan board (my experience), you'd think they might get the F***ing drivers up to snuff for NT. Winamp-> 2 seconds -> Blue Screen.
It was that freakin bad.
Zanshin gutted their driver for Live and told them all the stupid mistakes they were making. Nice case of closed source drivers being handed out to good programmers and causing total frustration.
Whatever CL pulls off with cool hardware or graphics fanciness, they'll never get my biz.
I hope this new Linux stud does a good job, at least he's already closer to the customer base.
[picking jaw up off the floor] Now THAT is a company that will get my money if I need the hardware. As long as the hardware is good, mind you. I hate buying from closed source (closed minded) companies, but I hate crappy hardware just as much. So, where can I find these people? I happen to be in need of an inexpensive NIC, and this one just shot to the top of my list.
Don't get too excited by this! If the current lack of 3D hardware support brings too many Linux users into accepting binary-only drivers, this could set a dangerous precedent for other hardware manufactors.
Ik heb nog nooit zo'n kutuitdrukking gehoord ...
translates to: "All losers suck"
*(Another peace of cloth removed from this man
The biggest obstacle to Linux on the desktop is the vast waste of memory and other processor time of X.
While X certainly uses a fair amount of memory, ps indicates it's only used 1.5% of CPU time for me at the moment. I don't consider that "vast".
X offers very little functionality for a desktop system,
Please explain. What functionality does a desktop system need that can't be implemented as an application using X?
and the networking stuff is inefficient.
Another unsupported statement.
The solution: XFree should focus on making a smaller and more usable package, and leave the direct graphics stuff up to GGI.
Or: Implement only GGI/KGIcon drivers (which should be highly portable as well), and run X via Xggi.
You'll have to come up with a pretty damned good reason to explain exactly how adding an extra layer is going to reduce the "inefficiency" you criticise.
I miss Meept.
We have fully open, with GPLed drivers, LML33 video capture card with hardware JPEG codec.
You're welcome to look at and if you want to support the notion of open hardware and want to
have fun messing with registers and bits - order the darn board.
Vassili Leonov
Sorry, but device drivers and other operating system components *must* be open source before I will run it or buy hardware associated with it. I've been using open source for far too long to go back to proprietary crud. Don't think binary-only drivers are that big a deal? Talk to someone with OSS-commercial and ask them how easy it is to change kernels. I don't honestly care about commercial *applications*, as I can live with or without them.
I realize that probably alot of the reason that things are kept closed are because of NDAs Creative and other companies have with 3dfx and such, and I understand. But you should also understand that my understanding still won't motivate me to throw money at you for your products.
If this were something similar to the Neomagic Xfree86 driver development, where it was almost expected that the driver would be opened later when Neomagic realized it wouldn't hurt them, I'd probably be more optimistic. However, this is quite a different situation, and even this developer admits it. Most of this code is *never* going to see the light of day. Does this guy think he really is *that* much of an uber-coder that he can write all of those drivers *on his own*, without missing something? I don't feel like seeing exploit code for a proprietary sound driver on bugtraq one day, thanks. I'll go without a 3d accelerator and even other basic hardware until the entire industry takes its collective head out of its collective arse.
Anyone here have any experiences with ATI video cards? I use the Mach 64 Rage Pro (8MB) card in my Red Hat Linux Box and it seems to work well.
I would be interested if anyone has had experience with them from a server or workstation perspective.
Thanks
Hmmm...what would be a good card for a Linux Workstation (preferably 1280x1024 and above) ;-)
Nick
LSG
Framerate? Please compare with windows on the same machine too, for reference.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I guess I'm not the only one to realize that 90% of email like he sent gets flushed to /dev/null. If people really want to make a difference they need to sit down with a pen and piece of paper and WRITE the companies!! You wouldn't believe how much more effect that has. email is too easy and NEVER gets seen by anyone that makes decisions in a company as large as Creative.
Aww, nuts. Even though I originally wanted to get a Creative TNT, but they weren't available in Canada when I was building my machine, so I went with the STB board. Now I have another reason to kick myself!
Exactly. BeOS is proprietary, so what? I don't need an OS to be Open Source, just functioning. BeOS is the sweetest OS out there, too bad the hardware support is minimal. I will be definetly switch to Be when it supports my hardware (Leadtek 2300, SBLive). Be is trying to change radically its UI instead of taking the route Windows and Linux did: steal from Apple (which in turn stole from PARC)
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
I used to work for Creative tech support here in Stillwater, Oklahoma. E-mail support was not handled at all. If they added it, it is something new, and I bet they are not giving much priority to it.
Actually, faxing them is probably one of the best ways to go. Someone will actually take the time to try to work through your problem, unlike the people who are on the phone and are supposed to try to keep the call to a 12 minute average.
I am planning to buy a TNT based video card soon. I have been contemplating which one to buy, but seeing this news makes the choice a whole lot easier.
Creative is moving in the right direction, I hope they reconsider and open-source the drivers... although I guess they don't want release Linux drivers for their cards and thus support every manufacturer's other card that uses the same chipset. Their work/time/money would be benifit other companies as much as it would their own. I can sympathize.
Really what should happen is the chip makers release generic drivers for the chipsets. Overall this is good though. In the long run it won't really be an issue though, eventually every chip maker/manufacturer will be forced to make Linux drivers due to demand (it'll happen). Those who don't will be at a weakness as Linux support is viewed more and more important.
I would like to see those "creative" people release a driver for the SB Pro, or does anyone know where to get one?? My 486 bomb doesnt have a sb driver yet :(
ICQ:15037019
Email:15037019@pager.mirabilis.com
It's not actually completely true that RedHat won't include binary-only. They include XBFCom NeoMagic X servers, which are only binary. I don't know if this means that they'll use the Creative drivers, though, because it is generally true that they refuse.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
It'd be awfully nice if they were to release specs or a Linux driver for their DVD drive. I'd like to be able to set up a Linux based DVD player.
What trade secrects could possibly be in 3D drivers? The only way that I could see that would be:
-The 3D stuff is done in software.
-Building 3D boards is ridiculously easy and making drivers is the hard part.
Of course, if the first one is the case, doesn't this defeat the purpose of hardware acceleration?
If the second one is the case, then the real difference between the voodoo I and the voodoo II is the driver?
Shouldn't the interface to 3D hardware be similar to the programmer's interface to openGL? I.e. here's a polygon. Here's the textures. Here's the viewport. Draw it. What could possibly be so secret about that. Can someone please answer this, it's been bugging me for a while.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
OK, now it's *cool* to support Linux, but what about FreeBSD, or BeOS, or some little operating system I want to crank up in my spare time? Hardware device interface specifications should be freely available.
What if Intel decided to keep their instruction set secret, so that AMD and Cyrix couldn't make clones? You'd have to sign an NDA to write a compiler. Don't you think that would be entirely counterproductive for the computer industry? This is exactly the same thing. Nobody should stand for hardware that doesn't come with instructions on how to use it, or at least have them available.
1) If anyone wants to know *that* badly, the drivers are small enough to realiably decompile. Or you could just examine the patents the company holds.
2) There will be one driver included in standard dists that works 100% in all hardware combinations. As opposed to the one that works at 95% optimal.
One point - in the article he said some parts would be kept secret due to alorithms creative wants to protect. Does this mean he would roughly label what they do and so people can write a (perhaps less efficient) free version?
Hooaahh!
:) Yeah, right out of the box too! Foo on companies (who shall remain nameless) that strongarm the little guy. God bless Linus.
That's the single most intelligent thing I've heard in the war against "lock and key hardware".
I think it's time manufacturers started listening to those of us who buy the hardware. If I spend money on a high-end card, I want it to be ready to run on whichever Linux I choose
I'm thinking that I'd rather pay $40 to OSS for a Creative sound driver, and donate $50 to XFree86 for a graphics driver for a Voodoo card. Both organizations have provided the framework for the implementation of other vendors' hardware drivers.
For myself, it will definitely affect a future buy decision if I can look at for example, Gateway or Dell's component list for a system, and determine either directly or by going to the component vendors' web pages, that drivers are available for Linux. It would affect my decision even more directly if the computer vendor provided drivers on their "System Restoration" CD.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
I just got a sudden urge to start reverse engineering a DVD driver... And luckily for me I live in a country where reverse engineering drivers to be able to interoperate with a product is a right that's protected by law... Hm :-)
In addition he mentioned OpenGL support