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Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla)
Lars-Göran Nilsson reports
that Creative has released Linux drivers with source code under the GPLv2
for its X-Fi and X-Fi Titanium series of sound cards for both 32 and 64-bit
operating systems. "We'd expect a wide range of people jumping at
the opportunity to be able to develop their own Linux drivers for the X-Fi
cards and implement the missing features and ad some of their own. We can't
wait to see what happens, but it might be some time before we see full
feature support, but it's great to see that Creative has finally come to
its senses."
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Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 7, 2008 21:38 UTC (Fri) by juhl (subscriber, #33245) [Link]
That's great news. Now if they would work to get it into the standard kernel.org kernel it would be really great :-)
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 7, 2008 22:18 UTC (Fri) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]
I imagine that's on the list of Things To Do. It's just not going to happen right away, there's code review and pushing it upstream to do first.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 8, 2008 1:23 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]
Welcome to the community, Creative! We know you've put a lot of hard work into getting this code ready. Now, if you'll just apply this TAINT_CRAP flag to your code we can get started with your first review...
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 9, 2008 14:57 UTC (Sun) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
Well, TAINT_CRAP mostly flags things to developers (kernel or distro). Remember that Windows for a long time has reacted to crap (uncertified) drivers with big scary warning dialogs, and IHVs reacted by updating their installation instructions to say that users should just click past the scary warnings or worse, they modified the installer to move the mouse and click through on its own. So Microsoft realised that a stick wasn't working and went for the nuclear option - in x86-64 Vista AFAIU users can't click past, they get a dialog saying the driver won't work, and that's it unless they are willing to modify the OS and reboot into a clearly labelled (and unsupported) "test mode" to use the hardware.
So we're not actually kicking Creative that hard for their crap driver compared to other OS vendors. A TAINT_CRAP flag almost certainly won't keep the driver out of Ubuntu or Fedora, and even in RHEL I can imagine a future "kernel-drivers-unsupported" or something package with these drivers in it.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 10, 2008 0:52 UTC (Mon) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]
I think sbergman27's point was to encourage them Creative to submit their drivers for inclusion in the kernel. This either requires them to fix all bugs before hand, or mark it with TAINT_CRAP and fix things post-merge.
So it isn't so much an insult as encouragement to merge early.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 10, 2008 16:46 UTC (Mon) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]
Maybe they will interpret it as a compliment, as in "T'AINT CRAP".
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 7, 2008 22:43 UTC (Fri) by mlankhorst (subscriber, #52260) [Link]
Creative stopped with their binary only drivers sooner than I expected..
has anyone checked the source code already? Is it the typical mess that happens when drivers are developed close sourced? Are their OpenAL libraries still binary only, or released open source too?
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 8, 2008 1:50 UTC (Sat) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Probably, but let's take a positive approach.There will be a lot of cleanup required, clearly, and that task can now start, ideally with a maximum of rigor and a minimum of insults.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 8, 2008 12:06 UTC (Sat) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
+suddenoutbreakofcommonsense.
Notes:
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 8, 2008 18:27 UTC (Sat) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] Totally ridiculous it may be, but as long as their EULA is not in total conflict with GPLv2 -- other than there being a EULA at all -- then its no doubt a typical case of someone not yet being completely clear on the concept, and trying to play it safe by what they understand to be their corporate rules. Corporate legal might also have been involved...Whatever anyone might think of Creative's hardware and drivers, lots of folks like them, and there is a lot of X-Fi cards out there, including many bundled with high-end GigaByte motherboards. We should all welcome this development, and those of us who can't contribute technically to making Creative's drivers Linux worthy can at least express our appreciation Creative is finally allowing its being done at all. Better late than never, etc. (Not intended as a criticism, just echoing JoeBuck's suggestion we display a positive attitude and let Creative know it.)
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 8, 2008 21:52 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Totally ridiculous it may be, but as long as their EULA is not in total conflict with GPLv2 -- other than there being a EULA at all -- then its no doubt a typical case of someone not yet being completely clear on the concept, and trying to play it safe by what they understand to be their corporate rules. Corporate legal might also have been involved...
It doesn't matter if it's in conflict or not. It's their copyright and they are under absolutely no obligation to follow it or not.
Probably what has happened is that they have their website setup by default to issue a EULA for every download and the guy didn't want to bother putting a special exception in for the source code. Or they didn't think about it.
I still remember driver for IBM Etherjet ISA Posted Nov 9, 2008 0:49 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It was probably first time I've downloaded "driver for Linux". Over 10 years ago. The driver was supplied as .exe file (for Windows, of course) which tried to create "driver floppy" when run (and failed under Wine). After some quest of finding the floppy and Windows system to run the stuff I've got it. The perfect "driver floppy" with .tar.gz file on it! EULA is obviously there for the same reason...
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 9, 2008 1:16 UTC (Sun) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>Whatever anyone might think of Creative's hardware and drivers
Sure sure, there are much worse things — like totally crappy cheap no-name on-board soundchips that can't do hardware mixing, have no volume control and support only one sample rate, or NVIDIA still releasing blobs only.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 9, 2008 1:47 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Well not having hardware mixing is very common. Even on very nice and professional cards. With hardware mixing your going to have the audio card itself doing the mixing and resampling. Hardware being what it is; it's static and cost is a big factor it is probably less then ideal to have the sound card doing the mixing for you, in terms of sound quality.
But these creative cards aren't designed for audiophiles.. they are designed for gamers and that's something else entirely.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 9, 2008 3:32 UTC (Sun) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>But these creative cards aren't designed for audiophiles.. they are designed for gamers and that's something else entirely.
Even as a gamer, I would wholeheartedly want these features. Been there.
Many a commercial games, among them UT99, still use the OSS interface. (No, LD_PRELOAD is not gonna work with static binaries.) The ALSA mixing layer might mitigate missing volume control or hardware mixing, but with the OSS interface this is not the case. Which means I get excessively loud sound output, and note that gamers often use headphones instead of speakers, usually which have no volume control either, and an uncontrollable sound level in the ears is hardly what I need. Furthermore, opening the OSS interface blocks other applications when you do not have hardware mixing. This means you cannot listen to your mp3 collection while in a game. It also means that games spawning an external process in direct output mode (e.g. timidity but not using -Or) won't have any music, because surprise, two programs trying to open /dev/dsp will fail.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 9, 2008 6:08 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Well I don't know about this volume mixing stuff. I don't think there is any card in my experience that didn't have volume controls on it. Even any onboard card or whatever. So I guess I am confused about what your talking about. Maybe if I had more specifics I would be able to understand you better.
Although I am very far from being a audio expert. Just a hobbyist.
Modern systems with integrated audio come using the "HD audio" stuff, which has supplanted the old AC'97 standard as the 'vesa' of sound cards. With that you get surround sound output, spdif, and all that happy stuff. That stuff is as good as anything that came out in the market just a few years ago. I know a lot of people don't like it, but it's just fine for the majority of people and outperforms the rest of the components of hardware.
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I don't know about UT99, but UT2004 uses SDL libs so that's not a big deal.
With ID engine'd games like RTCW and those ilk you can get working with SDL in short order with et-sdl-sound hack. It works much better then other more generic pre-load hacks.
http://nullkey.ath.cx/et-sdl-sound/
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The way I see it this sort of stuff works just fine for other OSes. (Well windows, anyways). So it's not really a hardware issue, but a Linux issue.
Sure with XP your audio will go through kernel-level software mixing (kmixer) for video games and all that if your card doesn't support hardware mixing for DirectSound, but it's not going to stop your game from working or you getting sound. It just tacks on a extra 30msec of latency to absorb some of the jitters.
Of course with Vista everything goes through software mixing, even DirectSound, so this has left Creative up shit's creek without a paddle. There is functionally very little difference a high-end gaming card will have vs onboard audio on a modern machine for Vista users. (Unless the game decides to use OpenAL for audio, which none of them are going to do)
So it would be smart for Linux folks to be VERY friendly to Creative. We may have the only OS left, aside from XP (which Microsoft is trying to bury as fast as possible) that allows them to take advantage of their card's hardware features.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 9, 2008 6:18 UTC (Sun) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>Well I don't know about this volume mixing stuff. I don't think there is any card in my experience that didn't have volume controls on it. Even any onboard card or whatever.
Well, here goes. https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=2250
>I don't know about UT99, but UT2004 uses SDL libs so that's not a big deal.
Many programs use SDL only for video. UT99 seems to use openal for audio output. However, the problem here is with programs using OSS in general - some of them can may be tweaked to use ALSA, but not those that have OSS open/ioctl etc hardcoded.
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 9, 2008 18:52 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
wow. That chipset is real POS. I guess that is a problem I've just managed to avoid accidently. (then again I've always avoided buying anything Sis-related)
Creative releases Linux GPL X-Fi drivers (Fudzilla) Posted Nov 10, 2008 12:58 UTC (Mon) by Tuxie (subscriber, #47191) [Link]
I haven't looked much at sound cards in the last decade, but something I REALLY want is hardware, realtime, transparent, near-zero latency AC3 or DTS encoding for 5.1 or 7.1 audio through SPDIF. Hardware mixing would be nice but is not mandatory. I have tried the ALSA a52-plugin and it works, but the latency is horrible, making it unusable for gaming. Currently I have 6x analog cables from the computer to the living room but it's less than ideal.
Is there a sound card that works with Linux that can do this?
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