Creative Labs and Linux

redemption wrote in to tell us that Creative Labs has a Soundblaster Developers page for Linux. Not much yet, but it looks like the start of support. Perhaps just as interesting is that redemption wrote in to tell us that 4Front has announced an Alpha (and very incomplete) driver for the SBlive.

Creative Labs

[kju]

Not only for the audio hardware, but for all of their hardware. I own there Encore DVD kit, and i like it very much, but i have to boot Windows to watch DVDs, and can't do anything usefull while having the DVD running (sometimes i want the DVD only running in the background while i'm working...). Creative Labs didn't even answered my email asking for help.

DVD (was: Creative Labs)

[kju]

This is not fully right. All DVDs i have are readably by ISO9660 complient standard drivers. Additional there is a UDF driver available for linux. Both drivers have the problem that they can not readout the data of some of the DVDs. I'm afraid that the problem in this DVDs is the Content Scrambling System (CSS). But as there are software only DVD players for Windows this can not be a real problem.

nVidia...

[gavinhall]

Posted by cosman:

nVidia must give the detonator sources or good specifications about riva chipset for that driver (for Mesa) can be made. But it's not going to happen in a hurry!

drivers?

[TedC]

I checked that out yesterday, and they really don't have any drivers on the page, just a couple of links to NVIDIA and 3D-Labs. Since these cards are already supported by XFree86, I hope it's 3D (OpenGL) drivers that they plan to release.

TedC

nVidia...

[MrJ]

nVidia is also working on its own GLX/Mesa drivers already, so they'd probably wait for them to finish that first anyway

nVidia...

[Ezra]

Where did you hear that?

Try ALSA

[Adnans]

The ALSA [alsa-project.org] drivers should support the SB 128 very well.

-adnans

Slashdot is a Linux site?

[ploeg]

HOW did Creative Labs get that impression?!? Granting that there's an occasional posting about Linux here, there's a lot more to Slashdot than just one operating system.

Oh, well, more links == more clickthrus. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Just a _leetle_ bit of sarcasm (but not too much).

[ploeg]

I've been visiting Slashdot for WAY more than a month at a time, so I know how much Linux is discussed here. I'm just kind of concerned that Slashdot doesn't get put into a ghetto of some sort or another. There's something more to it than just a single operating system. A site that has a poll about whether you like the Beatles, the Stones, or the Who the best can't be solely about a single operating system.

Maybe it would help if Rob got more into Beat Farmers-SCOTS-Mojo Nixon. Or maybe not.

Creative Labs

[Accipiter]

Being a pioneer in the Computer Audio industry, having Creative Labs backing Linux would be a tremendous step forward. Hopefully, they'll decide to release developer information for existing/future audio hardware.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Creative Labs

[Accipiter]

Good Point. I DID mean to say ALL of their hardware. As for your DVD problem, the DVD FS interpreter isn't completed yet on Linux, so DVD apps wouldn't be useful just yet.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Sucky web site!

[PD]

Creative thinks they know what fonts I like better than me, eh?

Well, their thoughtfulness has made the entire site completely illegible to me. I can't read a single word in their crappily fonted web site.

Support for the Open Sound System vs. Kernel

[Rayban]

Why does there seem to be more support for the OSS package than for writing pure open-source kernel drivers for linux? If we're putting together a nice Linux box without paying for the OS, the Windowing system or any of the millions of programs we use, it starts to seem a little unfair when we need to pay for something as simple as a sound driver, when Creative Labs could just release the specs of their boards.

I know that there are some chipset manufacturers that refuse to let companies like Creative release the chip specs, but does is this really a good business practice? I can't see a manufacturer holding an advantage over another by holding on to the specs. It might stop the practice of cloning, but Creative Labs wasn't hurt by this during the early 90's.

Never trust a program you don't have the source to! :)

Its in arial.

[dirty]

Hey thanks, I just got the xfstt rpm from the redhat powertools collection. rpm -ivh blar. Followed the simple instructions in /usr/doc/xfstt. And wow!!! That page is beautiful now.

OSS is not free

[josepha48]

Four Front Tech / OSS. They are not free drivers. I have a question. If I buy a sound blaster Sound card shouldn't the drivers come from Creative? OSS is getting no help from Creative so this is not really support it is a 'front' to support. It is a put-on. I am disappointed in Creative. Real support woudl be them helping OSS or them supplying the drivers themselves.

More unsupported Creative labs hardware

[xbill]

It is not just for the soundcards that creative does not give hardware specs. Just my luck- of all the CD burners to get-
I end up with a creative labs burner that is unsupported by cdrecord.

Here is the latest from the cdrecord web page:

http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employ ees/joerg.schilling/private/cdr-unsup-1.8. html

The following CD-R drives are not supported by cdrecord-1.8:

Drive type
Description
Support status
Creative Labs CDR 4210
Absolutely no support, Based on the Panasonic CW-7501
never

Support for the Open Sound System vs. Kernel

[Chris Pimlott]

OSS is just that, a _system_, an api for sound support. There are free GPL'd OSS drivers as well as the commercial OpenSound product. It's just an API.

Drivers for Creative sound boards

[Forkenhoppen]

SB128 drivers my ass. These drivers suck. Thanks to OSS' restriction to have only 3 line mixers, I can't use my video in/CD in 2 line on my SB128. I doubt they'll fix that little "oops" any time soon, either.

Heck, forget the video card audio line.. give me CD audio. That line mixer doesn't work either. (And believe me, I've tried.. Red Hat 5.2 didn't let me mix it, and neither did kernel 2.2.6..)

[grumble]


Fork

Creative Labs

[ywwg]

I called tech support about my encore kit because I was having problems (surprise!) in windows. Once we solved my problem, I asked about linux. He told me that he's been hearing "good things" about linux support from _within_ creative. Now, he didn't say "dvd support this month!" but he _definately_ didn't say "we have no plans to support it at this time." I am hopeful.

Support for the Open Sound System vs. Kernel

[MindStalker]

I seriously doupt they would ever make you pay for drivers. But the point is they want to leave the source closed, because they fear having it open will allow thier compitition to discover how to make compatible devices. I'm sure these closed source drivers could very well even be included in a distrubution.. just not the source of them.

Open Sound System?

[Tripster]

The driver coming from Creative themselves will not be shareware, the OSS driver on the other hand is shareware.

I'm just happy now cause I can finally listen to my CD's again in Linux with my Live! with OSS' alpha driver .. listening to Van Halen right now using it .. wahoo!! :)

Creative Labs

[Alan Cox]

They are still refusing to provide info on their
DVD products, on their sound cards, and only plan
a binary only driver of some sort it seems.
The trident 4D wave cards on the other hand have
vendor provided Linux drivers for ALSA, ESS tech
have provided reference source code for some of
their PCI cards which Im working on currently.
USB audio is an open spec.

Drivers for Creative sound boards

[Dibbler]

Creative only needs to make their own drivers if they don't release the necessary technical information to the open source community. Support for older ISA boards has been in the kernel for some time now. Even the PCI 64/128 boards are supported. You won't get tech support from Creative, since they didn't write the drivers, but you can get plenty of support from the Linux community.

The problem with the SB Live is that Creative refuses to release specs on the EMU-10K1 chip without an NDA. Apparently they're afraid that Aureal will use this information to create a "Vortex Live". Personally, I wouldn't mind the competition, but then I'm not a Creative employee or stockholder.

That's why Creative is probably developing a binary-only driver for the SB Live. I would prefer open source drivers myself, but I'll be happy either way when my SB Live works under Linux.

Wait a second? Didn't Creative hire a Linux ... ?

[Alphix]

The Linux guy was hired with the sole intention that he should write SB Live drivers, he himself has in newsgroup postings stated that he might make other drivers after the sb live is done but thats up to Creative Labs.............