Vista Makes Creative Labs Dupe Linux [Archive]

Michael

05-17-2007, 07:40 AM

If you were hoping to use a Creative X-Fi series sound card under Linux in the near future, think again. Last June we told you that Creative was planning on Q2'2007 for delivering a binary blob to support the X-Fi series along with delivering full support for ALSA and OpenAL v1.1 with EAX effects. Creative has now updated their open-source page saying that their closed-source X-Fi Linux driver will not even be in a public beta until the end of third quarter or fourth quarter this year. With the beta not even being available until the end of the year, we would be very surprised if Creative Labs will even deliver a stable X-Fi driver this year at all. What's the reason for this delay? It's due to Microsoft's Vista: "It has taken more resources than expect[ed] to redesign our software and drivers for Vista." Keep in mind that the driver they will be delivering to Linux X-Fi owners isn't even open-source.

It was bad enough when it took ATI about six months to deliver a Radeon X1000 "R500" Linux driver, but it will be over two years since Creative first introduced the X-Fi series and we still have no Linux support -- thanks to Microsoft Vista.

According to the ALSA's Sound Card Support Matrix, the Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi series still lacks any form of support from their open-source driver. The only path for Linux support at this time is purchasing the OSS driver from 4Front Technologies, but OSS is only rumored to support the X-Fi Xtreme Audio.

News Link: http://www.phoronix.com/?page=news_item&px=NTc4NA

What do you think about Creative's failure? Will you own another Creative Labs sound card?

Svartalf

05-17-2007, 08:04 AM

No. I don't plan on buying Creative anytime soon.

Nice cards, yes. But adequate sound, albeit not the coolest, comes out of most of the other sound devices out there, including USB ones. If you're not going to support me fully in whatever manner possible in exchange for supporting a boondoggle (and it was VERY obvious that Vista was that for the vendors out of the gate- but they went like lemmings over that cliff...) you lose my patronage.

Michael

05-17-2007, 09:05 AM

@ INQUIRER: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39687

Svartalf

05-17-2007, 09:13 AM

@ INQUIRER: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39687

pwn3d. :D

If I were Creative, I'd be working on damage control. Vista was an expensive waste of time for quite a few vendors (ATI... NVidia... Apparently, Creative...) and everyone's looking at MacOS and Linux very hard right now as an option- because Vista's NOT it. :D

deanjo

05-17-2007, 10:38 AM

This doesn't surprise me a bit. Creative has long been known for a slow and inept driver development no matter what the OS is. Until gaming publishers start seeing linux as a viable platform to publish games on you will continue getting the brush off from vendors like creative.

Gaming is the last major hurdle that linux has to overcome to become a mainstream OS. Until a publisher has the balls to publish the next killer game on linux 6 months before the windows version, this will never change. Sure we get tossed the odd "Me too" bone like Quake, UT and Doom but more often then not we are expected to go "Wow!" when a ancient game that appeared on Windows in 2001 finally get ported to linux (Ballistix).

There is however a tiny good thing that Vista has done for linux. With Microsoft's short sightedness and not bringing out a native accelerated sound API in Vista, the focus on OpenAL is now stronger then ever. This means that more soundcard companies are going to be concentrating on OpenAL support and development instead of just only Creative and now defunct Nvidia audio.

If you truly want good gaming hardware support in linux look for a small developer that has the next killer game and start hounding them before the code has gone to far to be portable. Get them to publish the linux version 6 months ahead of windows. A perfect candidate is http://www.projectoffset.com/.

[End Rant]

PS The last creative card I bought was a SoundBlaster 32. I have been able to find plenty of great alternatives since then.

smp-freak

05-17-2007, 10:00 PM

If you truly want good gaming hardware support in linux look for a small developer that has the next killer game and start hounding them before the code has gone to far to be portable. Get them to publish the linux version 6 months ahead of windows. A perfect candidate is http://www.projectoffset.com/.

[End Rant]

PS The last creative card I bought was a SoundBlaster 32. I have been able to find plenty of great alternatives since then.

I completely Agree to this. This is how you start to break the evil circle. However the downside is that you will probably get the group of weenies that would probably file a class action lawsuit that the client version is NOT for windows but released first for linux.

But couldn't they release the Windows Server version with the linux client version. would that not keep them happy? :p :D

I will NEVER buy a Sound card. I just rely on the onboard sound anyway. I have had a creative card but that was a soundblaster 16. I dont feel the need to have a crazy soundcard in my machines.

Svartalf

05-17-2007, 10:12 PM

ktyper

05-18-2007, 06:42 AM

And this is EXACTLY why my new soundcard became a RAZER instead. As opposed to any of the XFI BS which lets face it, just doesn't cut the mustard at all! The Razer works under Windows Vista/XP perfectly and the quality, I haven't heard anything better at all! And until a year ago I always brought Creative, but they're old hat these days. Their products haven't changed, they've gotten lazy!

The Razer I've just brought also has Optical In/Out on the card and it really does just rock. Under Linux its worked natively for me but then again, I haven't tried anything intense yet either. Games under Windows have become just scary, especially when you can hear the voices, they're so crisp its not funny!

Thanks Creative, for producing a complete lack of rubbish that made me look to see who else was around doing sound cards. I've heard the sound, and the sound is RAZER!

Arctucas

05-18-2007, 06:58 AM

Money talks.

ktyper

05-18-2007, 07:16 AM

But when the Razer is only £135 as opposed to Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 Soundcard which comes in at £220 and doesn't come close in sound quality. Cheaper in this case is actually better! And as for onboard sound, you don't know what you're missing!

Arctucas

05-18-2007, 08:33 AM

I was referring to the amount of cash at the Vole's disposal. IOW, when Billy G. wants something, he gets it.

Svartalf

05-18-2007, 09:32 AM

I was referring to the amount of cash at the Vole's disposal. IOW, when Billy G. wants something, he gets it.

To a certain extent, yes. However, that IS changing quite quickly.

I DO know that there's a batch of new games that are NOT DirectX and won't be- partly because of the Wii and the PS3. Some of which look every bit as good as the DirectX9/10 titles in progress or out. It's not that it's easier- it's different. And if you're gunning for anything other than X-Box and Windows (nobody in the console space will want MS-only if they've got their head screwed on straight these days...) then you will either do interchangeable rendering backends, etc. or skip X-Box and go for everything else. Several players are already doing this one- and I've seen a few of the titles at a previous consulting gig.

deanjo

05-18-2007, 10:10 AM

The largest problem with that line of thought is that you're asking the developer to take an initial hit in revenues. The Linux user base, while substantive enough to merit simultaneous releases is NOT large enough for them to do something like that unless they're Linux fans in the first place. That's an awfully tall order, especially for an Indie studio.

What's to stop an indie looking at companies such as Novell, Redhat, Mandriva, etc to become the publishers? These companies are desparately trying to crack the desktop user space and I'm sure would have no issue publishing the next "killer" game. BTW the crew at Project Offset are much of the same crew as Rune, so they are somewhat sympathetic towards linux.

Svartalf

05-18-2007, 10:47 AM

What's to stop an indie looking at companies such as Novell, Redhat, Mandriva, etc to become the publishers? These companies are desparately trying to crack the desktop user space and I'm sure would have no issue publishing the next "killer" game. BTW the crew at Project Offset are much of the same crew as Rune, so they are somewhat sympathetic towards linux.

Not their business segment. Stick with your competencies. You can bankroll a indie publisher, but if you're Red Hat, etc. that's NOT your business and you've little business doing it. Trust me on this one- it's a different business and it requires different thinking.

deanjo

05-18-2007, 11:28 AM

Not their business segment. Stick with your competencies. You can bankroll a indie publisher, but if you're Red Hat, etc. that's NOT your business and you've little business doing it. Trust me on this one- it's a different business and it requires different thinking.

Hey MS did it, and it worked for them. So did Apple with their products. It's thinking like yours that stagnates a market.

Svartalf

05-18-2007, 05:30 PM

Hey MS did it, and it worked for them. So did Apple with their products. It's thinking like yours that stagnates a market.

Considering that Red Hat TRIED that and quickly dropped it, you might want to re-think that thinking. And for your info, Apple doesn't DO game publishing and Microsoft, if you've not noticed, happens to be bigger than anyone else and is mostly there because of the bucks they're spending, not because they're doing any good at it.

Hey, I've got a great idea- why don't YOU go and do what you're suggesting? :D

deanjo

05-18-2007, 10:39 PM

Considering that Red Hat TRIED that and quickly dropped it, you might want to re-think that thinking. And for your info, Apple doesn't DO game publishing and Microsoft, if you've not noticed, happens to be bigger than anyone else and is mostly there because of the bucks they're spending, not because they're doing any good at it.

Hey, I've got a great idea- why don't YOU go and do what you're suggesting? :D

Apple didn't do mp3 players.
Apple didn't do Pro audio/video apps.
MS did not succeed on the first attempt at games either.
Redhat screwed up it happens and the timing was completely off, that does not mean would/could not work now.

You learn, you adjust, and then try again with another approach.

joshuapurcell

05-19-2007, 09:48 AM

News Link: http://www.phoronix.com/?page=news_item&px=NTc4NA

What do you think about Creative's failure? Will you own another Creative Labs sound card?
This is one of the main reasons my desktop (in sig) does not have a Creative card. The X-Fi is one of the most popular and newest cards Creative has released, and after so long it STILL doesn't have a Linux driver.

That is pathetic.

If Creative doesn't care enough about Linux users to at least get their latest card working on some crappy level under our OS, then I definitely don't care enough about their products or company to buy anything they're selling.

Synic

06-21-2007, 06:23 PM

I too believe that Creative have demonstrated that their product isnt a viable option for the approximate 3 billion people (1 billion in India, 1 Billion in China and almost 1 Billion in South America) in the world who's most affordable IT solution is a Linux system. It is interesting that they, as a commercial entitiy, would delibertly limit their market to such a degree. I thought the 'commercial imperative' would have dictated that they make their product available to as many users as possible.

It is unfortunate that Creative took this step in order to comply with what must be Microsoft pressure, but there are quite a few products on the market that provide equivilant performance to most of Creatives product range and that are compatible with many linux systems and the ALSA driver.

joshuapurcell

06-21-2007, 09:11 PM

It's just not worth buying a Creative product if you are remotely interested in Linux support. As mentioned in a previous post, "Money talks". I hope Creative's recent actions (or inactions) will cause them some level of financial problem, since that will be the only way this company will change their practices. Besides... there are plenty of alternative sound cards that are very well supported under LInux.

chabo

09-23-2007, 02:32 PM

http://connect.creativelabs.com/linux/default.aspx

joshuapurcell

09-23-2007, 08:12 PM

http://connect.creativelabs.com/linux/default.aspx

That's the link to where the beta driver will be at some point, but still nothing is available.

Michael

09-23-2007, 08:13 PM

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=11126

djdoo

09-24-2007, 03:37 PM

Hey guys have you seen the notes at the download page of the driver??

It proudly sais that the driver will NOT compile with GCC 4 and above!
Are they making us jokes?? Who uses nowdays GCC 3 anymore??

The driver which needs GCC 3 to compile must have a source at least 2 years old!!

If it cannot compile with GCC 4 then it is practically useless!!

And no hint about EAX there...
This kind of quality sound driver would have been build within a week from the ALSA devs and would not be even beta phase... I am pretty sure about that!

And it took them 2 years to build a crap like that... Jesus!

d2kx

09-24-2007, 03:59 PM

Please wait for some tests before saying Creative sucks. Creative sucks because it's closed source, yes, but let's wait for tests of the driver.

djdoo

09-24-2007, 04:13 PM

Creative sucks no matter what this driver has to offer cause they never gave us not even one closed source driver for any of their cards...
And also not opensourced a word of information about them.

And now they give out a closed 64 bit driver that cannot compile with GCC 4... You need more than that?

If I buy an X Fi and upgrade my current Audigy one how am I supposed to hear a note from it?
Still my Audigy after all those years cannot playback 24bit/96Khz sound under Linux and not to say about EAX effects...they just don't exist.
I use openSuSE 10.2 32 bit and it is shipped with GCC 4.1! And openSuSE 10.3 has even higher GCC version.

Should I downgrade to SuSE 9 in order to use it?? I don't think so...

Thetargos

09-24-2007, 05:38 PM

Actually the excellent support EMU10K1 and previous AWE and 16-bit cards have is because Creative released their specs (at least part of them, with sample code for the EMU10K1, previously they had a closed source driver for Live! cards too). Why didn't they do it again, is beyond me. I can only think of "too much third party IP" involved in the X-Fi.

niniendowarrior

09-24-2007, 06:33 PM

Well, you can mucker all you want about GCC 4. Fact of the matter is, Creative is building Linux drivers. We've all assaulted ATi for stupid drivers, but at least they came out with Linux drivers. Recognizing there's a Linux user base is the first step to having improved support. So, GCC 4 vs GCC 3... that nitpicking is something I can gloss over. I do hope Creative releases a 32-bit version too.

Should be interesting to see how these drivers perform.

Thetargos

09-24-2007, 07:20 PM

GCC 4 Vs 3 is an issue, unless you plan to build and run the driver in a distro like RHEL 3 or 4, SuSE 9.x and the like, which are based around GCC 3.2 and 3.4. Any recent distro is out of luck (sure, you can install the compat GCC34 and GCC32 packages for distros like Fedora to force use of GCC 3.2 and 3.4, but not many other distros offer such "facilities").

chabo

09-25-2007, 03:36 AM

Do someone know what is maximum kernel verson to be able to compile it?

chabo

09-25-2007, 03:58 PM

I've tried 2.6.19-gentoo-r7 & gcc 3.4.6, because this is last release where function INIT_WORK use 3 parameters as used in Creative code. I can compile and build driver with some changes in include files(add #include linux/autoconf.h everywhere it uses kernel includes, #define UTS_RELEASE "2.6.19-gentoo-r7" in linux/version.h) Only bad thing is, that on insmod it has many unresolved symbols from alsa, so it will be some kernel among 2.6.10 and 2.6.19 hehe :)

eNTi

09-26-2007, 05:29 PM

Thetargos

09-26-2007, 06:24 PM

soo... let's just assume creative sucks. what alternatives (probably cheaper than the razer) are there for us? i want good sound in linux/windows, and well... i'll let it cost me some money, not 200€ though. i'd rather go with onboard then.

See this (http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5386) other discussion about the X-Fi and other ramblings about how good support you can expect for sound hardware on Linux.

Panix

10-07-2007, 11:00 PM

Besides... there are plenty of alternative sound cards that are very well supported under LInux.
Like?
I have researched and will mention two possible supported sound cards:
Audiophile (2496 for e.g.)
Delta series

Anybody know of those? Is there any others of particular mention?

I am interested in a sound card for overall use and in particular, music creation (using instruments).

I was also thinking of M-Audio but doesn't Creative own them?

Thetargos

10-07-2007, 11:06 PM

Like?
I have researched and will mention two possible supported sound cards:
Audiophile (2496 for e.g.)
Delta series

Anybody know of those? Is there any others of particular mention?

I am interested in a sound card for overall use and in particular, music creation (using instruments).

I was also thinking of M-Audio but doesn't Creative own them?

Why don't you check the ALSA sound card support Matrix (http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main)?

MrCanard

10-08-2007, 05:03 AM

I was also thinking of M-Audio but doesn't Creative own them?

No, E-Mu is part of Creative, but in name only.
As of three or four months ago a lot of the E-MU line is supported by ALSA.

I use the E-MU 1212M to A/D lots of vinyl & tape.

Thetargos

10-11-2007, 01:47 AM

I'm not familiar with E-Mu products, but I don't think there's many products based off the X-Fi arch.

MrCanard

10-11-2007, 07:07 PM

You're right, it's not based off the X-Fi.

A quote from ExtremeTech http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1562571,00.asp

"A Little Background"

"The E-MU crew designed the DSPs that have powered every Creative Sound Blaster sound card since Sound Blaster Live. The first DSP, dubbed the 10K1, featured two 64-voice hardware wavetable synthesizers, in addition to four simultaneous DSP effects in flight at once. Then E-MU produced a derivative processor from the original 10K1 design, the 10K2. 96KHz/24-bit playback was the most noteworthy new feature in this second-generation part."

You can read what Matrix Talk:Module-emu10k1 is saying here, http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix_Talk:Module-emu10k1

Thetargos

10-12-2007, 02:02 AM

Kano

10-12-2007, 11:37 AM

Then the first post is "half" correct then someone could simply use OSS, it is free - even available as source code. Does it work or not?

http://developer.opensound.com/

Michael

10-12-2007, 11:42 AM

Then the first post is "half" correct then someone could simply use OSS, it is free - even available as source code. Does it work or not?

http://developer.opensound.com/

Last I knew OSS only worked with like the XtremeAudio, their lowest-end X-Fi chip that really isn't even an X-Fi APU.

Thetargos

10-12-2007, 01:14 PM

there is something I don't quite understand here... E-Mu, IIRC was actually bought up by Creative weren't they? Yet none of their products seem to be currently using the X-Fi DSPs, from what I've been able to see, most of their products are still based off the architecture of the EMU10K*, so this has me wondering... Were they really bought up by Creative or did they simply provided the chips for the Live, Audigy and Audigy2 generations of cards?