thelinuxlink.net

VIA open-source portal goes live

02/05/2008
VIA open-source portal goes live

http://www.cclonline.com/news2/newsArti ... id=cclnews

"The beta version of the VIA Linux Portal, a distribution route for open-source software, has been announced.

VIA Technologies revealed that the new portal will initially provide graphics drivers for the VIA CN896 digital media IGP chipset for the new Ubuntu 8.04 LTS release.

Ubuntu, sponsored by open-source creator Canonical, is a free-to-use operating system, which can be used on laptops, desktops and servers, and contains applications such as word processing and email clients.

Source code and documentation for the drivers will follow in the next few weeks, while the portal will also maintain a regular release timetable, designed to follow the latest Linux distributions.

Richard Brown, vice-president of corporate marketing at VIA Technologies, said: "VIA is excited to be taking a more active role within the open source ecosystem.

"Opening the VIA Linux Portal is an important step in our long term open source initiative and offering support for Ubuntu."

Canonical have said that they look forward to working with VIA and welcomed the firm's effort to support the open-source community."

I think most of us adopt the "wait and see" attitude when it comes to these things. Here's the portal, though:
http://linux.via.com.tw/support/downloadFiles.action

Hardly impressive, but I'll reserve judgement for a year, and see how they behave.

I'm still using the first desktop computer I built a few years ago, and I made the mistake of buying one with a VIA chipset. Now I can't use F-Spot because it hard locks the computer, and I have to use the "Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring" trick to get the thing to shutdown. This started in Gutsy, and hasn't been fixed in Hardy, and I'm not going to start using closed source drivers again. Too much of a hassle. I might have to upgrade my desktop and start using an Intel board, just so I can get open video drivers for Compiz. I like AMD, but I've no clue how long it will be before they have good open source video drivers. Speaking of which, I did a quick search and didn't find any reports on how that's progressing. Everything I've read suggests that AMD has been making good on their promise, though.

EDIT:
Found some info:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... sive&num=1

Seems like work is progressing pretty well.

Even with specs writing drivers take a while, some people have this idea that with specs a driver will be out in a year. Its just not that realistic a less a lot of people work on it.

That locking up with F-spot seems odd. Have you tried another distro?

I'm not expecting a driver in a year, I just want to make sure AMD is giving the kernel devs the information they need to get the job done. My concern is with the company's willingness to cooperate, if that's good, then I know the driver will eventually come.

The F-Spot lockup has something to do with the VIA driver, so it's a kernel thing. I could try another distro, but I think as long as I'm using a motherboard with a VIA chipset, I'm going to suffer for it. Trying to use the Vesa driver as recommended in there didn't work for me in Gutsy, but I haven't tried it in Hardy. Time to give that a whirl again.