i'll wait on the sidelines

undefined — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:10:58 +0000

i want to believe that via will "get it", but i'm not holding my breath. not that it can't
happen, but i'll believe it when i see it.

i have two via-based motherboards, and both are troublesome. just today i saw a via-powered
netbook for cheap, but swore it off with its via & s3 chipsets after what i've endured with
those two motherboards.

the via sata controller on my asus a8v deluxe hiccups causing linux to throw one of the two
drives out of its raid1 array (thinking it has failed). adding the drive back into the array
is a 24-hour affair: i stress test the controller, sata channel, and drive by running
"badblocks -w" on it and then add it back into the array, requiring 8 hours to resync. this
use to happen once a week with 2.6.12, once a month with 2.6.15, once a quarter with 2.6.20,
and now hardly ever with 2.6.22.

the s3 unichrome (k8m890) graphics chip on my asus a8v-vm se board is a pain to support. i
avoided via's driver because of all the bad things i had heard about it. then i tried both
unichrome and openchrome drivers, finally settling on openchrome. the k8m890 support was
handled in a non-packaged experimental tree, so i've had to build the driver myself each
distro release. the video driver works, but xvmc isn't supported, xv performance is
lackluster, and 3d support is too much trouble (after having already downloaded,
patched/merged, and built the x driver) and supposedly not that optimal. i'm about to finally
upgrade that computer to ubuntu hardly/8.04.1, and at the same time i'm going to install a
radeon x1050 pci-e card and forget about the poorly-supported s3 video.

my most recent motherboard was an amd/ati setup (780g chipset) as i didn't even consider via
because they are usually a little bit cheaper, but not worth all the extra hassle/trouble i've
experienced (see above).

so i wish harald luck, but via has already lost me as a customer.

Harald Welte on his new role with VIA

Miladinoski — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:11:08 +0000

Duuude, WTF!!! Thats not weird, that's .... no offense, but he looks like a martian...

Harald Welte on his new role with VIA

b7j0c — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:45:57 +0000

yeah thats the kind of haircut you get as the result of a lost bet

Harald Welte on his new role with VIA

cde — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:34:57 +0000

That's good news! Harald has a wierd haircut though.

Harald Welte on his new role with VIA

liljencrantz — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:06:10 +0000

Even after a great many false starts and broken promises from Via, this latest stunt actually
leaves me with a lot of hope. If they manage to get their graphics drivers merged with X.org
in the next six months, it's definitely a success.

LWN: Comments on "Harald Welte on his new role with VIA"

i'll wait on the sidelines

Harald Welte on his new role with VIA

Harald Welte on his new role with VIA

Harald Welte on his new role with VIA

Harald Welte on his new role with VIA