Creative Labs releases X-Fi specs to FOSS coders
Took it long enough
CREATIVE LABS is finally releasing hardware data sheets and software driver specifications for its Sound Blaster X-Fi sound cards to open sauce developers.
First announced in late 2005, the Sound Blaster X-Fi sound cards are radically different in design than Creative's earlier Audigy family of PC audio subsystems.
The company had refused to provide FOSS coders with documentation for the X-Fi cards, instead saying that it would provide a proprietary software driver for Linux itself someday. Two years later, what it had managed to release was a half-crippled beta driver... for the X86-64 architecture only, compiled with a back level version of GCC.
However, in an Open Sound System (OSS) 4.0 build 1013 beta release, 4Front Technologies advertised limited support for Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi cards.
But most Linux distributions use ALSA sound card drivers, which are included with the latest Linux kernel releases, instead of the older OSS driver software.
Thus, it's even better news for Linux users that ALSA Project developer James Courtier-Dutton revealed last week that he expects to receive documentation for the Sound Blaster X-Fi cards from Creative Labs "within the next few weeks."
Better late than never, we guess. µ
L'INQ
Heise
Comments
Finally!
Having tried that stupid driver from Sept 07, checking all the support questions in Sound Blasters own forums, they finally get a clueOpportunity knocks...
Hey Linux zealots... here is an excellent opportunity to make Microsoft and Vista look bad. If the community can come up with an open source driver for the X-fi cards that keeps the hardware acceleration intact then Microsoft is going to look like first rate idiots for dropping HW acceleration in Vista. I've used Creative's "ALchemy" answer for Vista... it sucks. Boo Microsoft for bowing to RIAA pressure and DRM-ing Vista to death.Now get to work penguins!
Creative rubbish
These cards don't do Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect, so they can't pass 5.1 to your home theater from games, therefore they are garbage.Linux support for sound is also rubbish, at least in the KDE env..
Linux Has a Chance
Now Linux has a chance to over take M$.If they can keep going and get the drivers out for there Op system, and get more game makers to make software for Linux then it will take off big time. As there are a lot of people looking of something else to run on there systems. But as it is now there is nothing to use.
Two things drive the market on PC's. One is games, the other is office software, Well they have the Office software for linux, but the games are little and far between. When they get that on the marked , and be able to load drivers with a click on a Icon , I think linux will over take Vista and Win XP fast.
Here is your chance, it will take Microsoft at least a year and a half to get there new op system on the market, if you can get linux going like I said above where anyone can use it with out having to do the loading the hard way then you can take over the market.
Let's see what you can do. You are very close now to having it ready .
Creative improve support!!
Creative have always had really crap support especially on their soundcards, and ignore most support rquests outright. I don't know any IT pros who would touch Creative hardware (with the occasional exception of the Audigy).I wrote to them with a work-around fix for the huge lag many users had with the SBlive (pre Dx6). They refused to accept there was a problem for over a year before finally publishing the work-around on their forums (the actual bug was never fixed).
All things considered, this news article shows an improvement from Creative support. I still would touch them though.
:-)
IoI
They finally listened after a pledge thread of 1000+ pages lol.Sigh.
Creative Technolgies = Singaporean Engineers and Developers = Ignorant Arrogant Fools.