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Open Source Job at Creative Labs
A number of people pointed us to a help wanted form on Creative Labs website. I wouldn't normally post helped wanted, but any situation that includes duties such as "...for the implementation of Linux applications that
build on the opensource drivers currently for our DVD's, Sound Cards, Nomad,
as well as other products in development. This includes bug fixes,
optimizations, kernel tweaks, working with our Open Source team, and
individual contributors from the Linux community," looks good by me. The word-use is a bit strange - it looks like they will be Open Source drivers, correct?
I wonder how a human resources department will handle the Slashdot Effect. Should be interesting, not to mention overwhelming.
It took Creative long enough to hop on the bandwagon. I have a SB Live! Value and the support under linux is bad. It's rather non-standard. However, it is nice that they are finally coming around. I am waiting for the Q1-2000 release of the new drivers to see if this will help/fix things.
Is anyone here working on that project that can give some status on it?
-Steve
My intelligence insults itself.
I suspect someone will have to go for an interview to get more details, unless someone at Creative Labs reads Slashdot and can clarify this for us.
With modular device drivers, generally speaking, who cares if it's open-source.
Linux Kernel Modules are modular in that they don't need to be preloaded, not in that they don't need to be compiled for a given machine.
There are all sorts of variations--SMP v. Single Processor, 1GB v. 2GB memory barrier, and the all important kernel revision that make closed source drivers a nightmare to keep working over time.
And the Linux-Kernel list doesn't care--and I somewhat agree.
Microsoft's response to broken drivers has been to blame them for most NT crashes, and *try* to have a certification program. The Linux-Kernel list has pretty much flat out stated that that's not acceptable. They want to do things right, therefore while the interfaces they expose to userlevel stuff will remain compatible, they reserve the right to break the kernel into little pieces if the rebuild ends up more efficient. The interesting thing is that this forces driver development to stay in sync with kernel development, preventing rot and being a definite contributor to system stability as a whole.
It's an interesting response, if you ask me.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
*quietly hides under a table and screams*
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It looks like a "Creative Play Center" for Linux as well as a "Creative Launcher", etc. The sound card manufacturers feel this need to develope their own applications to do things like
play a wav.
play a cd.
be a taskbar.
record a wav.
play midi files.
What the hell does Linux need with a Creative Launcher? What this will do is end up with a Liveware for Linux with a bunch of low quality sound related applications that have wierd bugs and assorted problems. I think Creative should customize GLP'ed audio apps with a Creative logo, write a good help file documenting everything, and allow anybody to download it. Beats the hell out of proprietary audio apps that don't work as well as their GPL'ed counterparts.
Taco seemed surprised that the drivers would be open sourced, but if you look at it from a Creative Labs point of view it's obvious.
1.Createive labs makes 0$ from their Drivers.
2.The more people who can purchase and use their hard drive the better.
3. the better the drivers for their hardware are the more people will want to buy their hardware.
So it's an excellent business move on their part.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The stuff that Creative Labs does and the stuff that people are making money off of are completely seperate entities. I would rank multimedia as about the worst thing you could specialize in right now, especially if your not engineering but tweeking, as Creative Labs emphasized. You don't see anyone selling multimedia workstations anymore. They're consistantly selling the e-commerce capability. There's a big difference between tweeking, fixing bugs and optimizing from developing the technology itself. As as we know from 1993, when the technology changes the tweekers usually end up unemployed. If you're qualified enough to beat out the 1 million Creative Labs candidates, you should probably be working on web servers, databases, and networking and not low level multimedia drivers.
The way you make money is not by writing apps but by getting as far down in the food chain as possible. I assure you Creative is not going to fund Linux applications.
All interesting apps (XMMS, mpg123, the Flash plugin, RealPlayer G2 beta) and games (Q2/Q3A/UT/XMAME) work and sound great now. Problems remaining:
:)
- the mixer is quite messed up (master volume in kmix controls both front/back panning and bass/treble!) A consequence of this is that the digital inputs aren't all working.
- No MIDI wavetable/soundfont support yet (Creative has just released some more info on the hardware that makes it possible however)
- No 4 speaker/3d audio yet
On the plus side, joysticks work great, and a bunch of apps can open and use the card at once now (I tried 2 XMMSs, an mpg123, and a TiMidity++ running, which created quite a cacophany!
The current (GPL'd) drivers will continue to develop independantly of the binary-only branch. The binary-only drivers will supply certain IP-bound features of the card (EAX's reverb and HRTF algorithms notably), while the open-source drivers will continue to be developed. (The open source drivers will also get effects, but they won't be Emu/Ensoniq's algorithms).
.h file is in CVS now. The ALSA guys are working on their own version of such a driver - since they already have soundfont code for the AWE32 they may have an edge on getting wavetable running faster.
:)
Wavetable features will be developed for the GPL driver - Creative released register specs for the emu10k1 engine Tuesday on the list, and the new commented
Plus, Alan Cox will be placing the current driver into the 2.3.x kernel soon (cleanup for that is almost done). Creative thinks this is cool (and under GPL they can't really object
but they got it wrong, but even linux.com has got it wrong, so we'll not hold it against them.
"- Experience with various window managers (Gnome, KDE, etc.)"
At least this looks like they want to integrate whatever programs they make into the various Desktop Environments, which has to be a good thing.
All of Creative's current drivers are full 100% Stallman-approved GNU General Public License Open Source(tm). No need to be cynical :)
On the other hand, for those who don't know how to use CVS yet, it's a mystery how people are saying the drivers are working great ...
Now that there are daily snapshots of the code, it's great. In all honesty, I still don't understand why they didn't release the code earlier ... ;)
I think the Linux crowd needs to calm down and remember that these sorts of announcements are Good Things for Everyone, and show a little patience.
Yes, some companies will do truly great things, and yes, some will make some mistakes as they learn about Linux and open source. Would you rather put up with those mistakes or have the companies ignore Linux and spend all their time and money supporting Windows? I can't speak for anyone else here, but I'd much rather have to endure such a trivial inconvenience than be stuck with no support at all.
Why did no-one comment on the big TLA, the first
thing that the article mentioned?
As it is, we have *NO* DVD for linux and *NO*
prospects for DVD for linux on *ANYBODY's* hardware. Don't talk to me about the encryption hack/experimental possibilities.
What about the fact that this is the first, and
only, time a vendor has said there could possibly
be DVD support for linux?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
don't know why this ceative gets a headline on slashdot.
e s.cgi listed 6 linux development jobs. 3 in kernel, 1 I/O, 2 in OpenGL drivers. Search IBM/HP etc and you'll probably find a bunch more. Plenty of work for kernel hackers/device driver writers at the moment.
A quick perusal of sgi's employment pages http://www.sgi.com/cgi-bin/employment/opportuniti
Well, sorry if the wording is not clear. What I am looking for is an S/W Applications engineer to develop tools, sample code, utilities, and of course Apps (GUI Mixer, Effects Compiler, Misc GUI Apps). Right now we have a sound driver(no pun) that is coming along very quickly, and in a short period of time I believe that we will need some good GUI controls for various features (downloading effects, routing inputs/outputs, etc). In addition we need a pretty "User Gui" for other products such as DVD, WebCam, and Nomad. Now... it is critical that we(Creative and other driver developers) put together Application Interfaces and Driver Interfaces that work well together -- which is why the add reads they way it does. I am looking for someone to come in and help pull together ideas from the people that are doing the driver work(inside and outside the company). I am NOT looking for someone to come in and push their own agenda. So the ideal person is both technically capable as well as being able to articulate a long term vision to people. I hope this helps clarify what I am searching for. Cheers, Jake
Use the latest CVS snapshots of the driver. The choppiness problem (in general, I don't know about Q3A) has been fixed several weeks ago (at least).
If your system bus is full of stuff going to your video card, though, that still couldn't help...
Ever heard of Nist/Livid ?
Yes, it falls under the category of "getting there." So things are coming; and I do not mean to sound like the one complaining that "We aren't there yet". But my message was sincere -- there
have been damn few reports of DVD working under
Linux; fewer that would indicate DVD/V4L will ever
pass the mom test, and lots of reports of things
like patent problems, crypto problems, and general
vendor noninterest.
So to me, the biggest news of the piece was that a vendor was going to work on DVD support.
"never heard about the DXR2 drivers on the Creative Opensource site? "
My post was about the lack of mention of this support, and to comment on the perceived general lack of usability for dvd
drives. My basis for the statement is on the huge amount of discussion about just how little chance there is of dvd support under linux due to patent problems and vendor ignorance. To my understanding, except for a very
few models of DVD drives, those problems are still
showstoppers. If that's not true, it should have been headline news sometime in the last 2 months or so.
"Or that Sigma Designs is planning
on giving their next Hollywood chip native Linux support?! "
If the future is bright, that's wonderful.
Right now, most linux users will need to reboot to
another OS to have a fully supported DVD.
Personally, if you could tell me what model of
DVD to buy in order to enjoy full linux support, I'll buy it today. It doesn't matter to
that playing dvd's is more complex than putting
the disc in the drive and closing the door, but
there's a lot of people out there that we'd like
to get started using linux. They're in for quite
a shock given the general state of affairs.
That's why I think announcements like winmodem support and dvd support are important and need
to be talked up.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.