VIA Will Not Provide An OSS Chrome 9 3D Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VIA Will Not Provide An OSS Chrome 9 3D Driver

This morning VIA's Bruce Chang had submitted the DRM code for the Chrome 9 IGP with a request that it be pushed into the mainline Linux kernel. The DRM alone isn't usable to an end-user without a Mesa driver or something else to take advantage of this kernel component. VIA previously expressed interest in a Gallium3D-based Chrome 9 driver, but now today we find out they have no intentions on creating an open-source Chrome 9 3D driver. Instead, they just want this DRM into the mainline Linux kernel so that it can be used by their binary blob and to hopefully have some open-source developers come along and create a free software driver from their incomplete documentation.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14051

[Adarion]

Oh fuck you, VIA. A binary what? That strange thing of bytes that will only work (or better expressed: not work) on few selected age old distributions? You want to give us that?
Nah, forget it. I will not buy any piece of VIA's shoddy hardware, make sure not even to get soundchips or networkchips, unless this changes. It's ok to just give specs as Greg KH said and the community will care for a free driver but it needs at least these specs!
And telling us that one of the once largest chipset maufracturers isn't able to give at least a starting kick to it? Not havin the resources? Who in the fricken Windoze world buys VIA's shit? I doubt a single person would use a VIA box for gaming. They should rather make themselves a safe place in the Linux corner cause they won't stand long in the rest of the world.

[[Knuckles]]

Oh fuck you, VIA. A binary what? That strange thing of bytes that will only work (or better expressed: not work) on few selected age old distributions? You want to give us that?
Nah, forget it. I will not buy any piece of VIA's shoddy hardware, make sure not even to get soundchips or networkchips, unless this changes. It's ok to just give specs as Greg KH said and the community will care for a free driver but it needs at least these specs!
And telling us that one of the once largest chipset maufracturers isn't able to give at least a starting kick to it? Not havin the resources? Who in the fricken Windoze world buys VIA's shit? I doubt a single person would use a VIA box for gaming. They should rather make themselves a safe place in the Linux corner cause they won't stand long in the rest of the world.

Fully agreed. No one I know has a good opinion of VIA's hardware, and with the intel atom there is basically no reason in going for a VIA platform.

[mendieta]

Fully agreed. No one I know has a good opinion of VIA's hardware, and with the intel atom there is basically no reason in going for a VIA platform.

Yep, I am always voting with my wallet. My next purchase will be an ATI discrete card to celebrate the 3D Open Source drivers whenever that happens.

BTW, they could outsource to Tungsten Graphics to do this, no? It should be so much easier now with Gallium!

[Nille]

If via release the rest of the documentation i have no problem with an closed source mesa and DDX and an open source kernel module.

[Ex-Cyber]

Who in the fricken Windoze world buys VIA's shit? I doubt a single person would use a VIA box for gaming. They should rather make themselves a safe place in the Linux corner cause they won't stand long in the rest of the world.

VIA hasn't been seriously pursuing the gamer/enthusiast market for years; they've been setting the standards for small, low-power PC systems. Intel and Nvidia are just now getting around to producing stuff that can compete with VIA in this space.

[Louise]

Have any one counted how many times the article repeats itself?

[mendieta]

Have any one counted how many times the article repeats itself?

Yep

I was missing a final paragraph:

I REPEAT. Via is not ...

LOL!

[Louise]

I didn't quite understand, was it the complete programming documentation VIA had released?

Well, at least they will release an Open Source 3D driver, once the DRM is merged to kernel

[Adarion]

VIA hasn't been seriously pursuing the gamer/enthusiast market for years; they've been setting the standards for small, low-power PC systems. Intel and Nvidia are just now getting around to producing stuff that can compete with VIA in this space.

But exactly that it is. Years ago when they came with their mini/nano/pico ITX stuff it was quite interesting for fileservers and such. Or maybe a little HTPC. The CPUs (and I have some of them) never showed much performance but barely enough for home server purposes and with 2d acceleration by the GPU also ok for DVDs and such. The problem have always been the graphic drivers - no other part of them has caused me so much headache since the old KT133 chipsets.
I had them all. The old xorg via driver (which covered hardly CLE266), I still hear Luc Verhaegens complaints, the unichrome one and the openchrome. Some did sometimes work on certain things and others not. I won't mention the binary thing since it was even more awful.
So years go by, my CLE266s are "Asbach" old and still there is no decent support. (As far as I heard the Windows drivers were of same or even inferior quality.)
So it is aging more and more and there is still no real support for it. Sometimes it feels like using a VESA driver.

I mean I really liked the idea of these C7 eden ones, the padlock stuff, the wattage is really neat for an x86 system, passively cooled and performance ... well, it could be worse.
But then when I see all the troubles I had with it... no. Not again. I'm well awara that there is hardly a perfect, flawless chipset and all but that experice with VIA isn't one that I'd recommend.

And especially that low power corner (it ain't low cost, the complete mini ITX board was about the same price like my far more powerful AMD solution), this corner was one that is now becoming populated with intel's Atom (AMD's Geode seems to be gone, though it was also an early low power soultion) and possibly nvidias ion stuff or whatever it was called. Yes. But VIA had the chance to get a good stand here already but they were so uncooperative and not willing that it seems to be too late.