VIA Releases FOSS Graphics Driver

billybob2 writes "VIA has released a 113,800 line open source graphics driver with full mode-setting support for CRT, LCD, and DVI devices along with 2D, X-Video, and cursor acceleration. Harald Welte, VIA's open source representative, states that the next step is to add 3D (see preview), TV-out, and hardware codec support while integrating this work with existing open source projects. VIA has pre-installed Linux on a significant portion of the company's latest products, including the EVEREX gPC2, 15.4" gBook, and CloudBook. It has also helped port the open source CoreBoot BIOS (previously LinuxBIOS) to several of its motherboards." VIA seems to be making good on the promise of its open source initiative announced last April.

Re:Obligatory

[Merlin42]

Not yet, but soon hopefully. As stated in the OP.

It is really cool to see more hardware vendors moving to open source. Drivers are one area where more eyes are needed to help make the bugs shallow.

I do hope this pans out...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I hope that this goes better than VIA's prior activities in this area. VIA has some very, very cute hardware for linux project purposes(loads of small form factor boards, without the restrictions that intel has been putting on atom), some decently interesting netbooks, etc.

If I can trust that VIA video will actually work properly under linux, their boards become considerably more attractive for my purposes. The prospect of coreboot support for such boards would be gravy. I'd love to be able to put together some little linux widgets with linux burned right into the motherboard.

tv and hardware codec are what you really want

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, with most EPIA fanless systems suitable for MythTV being Via chipset, the tv/hardware accel (some chips have hardware mpeg2/mpeg4 support for pity's sake), that's what would absolutely rule if there was an opensource driver that worked.

Now show them why OSS is good

[slimjim8094]

As an act of faith, we should build something cool out of this - not to mention promote them to non-gaming computer users.

If we can optimize a graphics driver or do new things with it, they can sell more hardware and everybody wins. God knows ATI isn't making any money off of their drivers.

Hopefully we can use this to drive the point home.

Re:VIA stuff doesn't support 720p or 1080i

[Jorophose]

Wait, what?

NTSC ending doesn't mean we'll all be watching 720/1080. It means everything is digital, MPEG2 streams. We're all a looong way off from HDTV-to-the-door.

Their chipsets can certainly do 1080p. Look at the CN400.

Re:Now show them why OSS is good

[Jorophose]

But the question is, what?

Re:Arrghhhh

[philipgar]

Because it makes THAT much of a difference that the code that operates your graphics card is compiled by nVidia, and not the ubuntu package maintainers. The whole argument for FOSS 3D video card drivers is just silly in my opinion. Very very very few people have the skills necessary to write good drivers for these chips (others can learn, but that takes months or years to do). The people who write these drivers do it as a full time job, and the drivers are some of the most important IP in a graphics card (if they were released under a gpl like license, it would be much easier for a new competitor to develop a product). Opening specs is somewhat possible, but costly to do, and a large pain to get the chance to do. At the end of the day it would allow the FOSS community to write drivers that half work on their cards. It could also break user's cards (which is an issue to the manufacturer, as many are warranted). It would take years to get a driver remotely comparable to the already available ones, and, that assumes a team of qualified people took up the challenge.

I just really love the fact that you consider it "evil" for them to not release source code for their products. For me, the nVidia drivers have always worked fine under linux. Of course, I don't game at all, and don't require powerful graphics cards in my machines. Personally I'd much rather have something that works well, even if I have to pay for it (which isn't the case with the nVidia drivers) than something that half works and is free and open.

Phil

Re:Almost unbelievable

[rossz]

Maybe they wronged the open source community in the past, maybe they didn't (I personally don't know). Let's show them that we are forgiving of past mistakes and fully welcome them and their donated code into the FOSS world. They made things right, let's not dwell on the past.

Re:Arrghhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

We'd have XRender that doesn't suck, kernel mode setting, and DRI2.

I'd rather have specs than proprietary drivers.

Re:Arrghhhh

[Yfrwlf]

Yes, because sharing source code so that you can get extra help from the rest of the world so you can all work together on software is horrible and wasteful and will produce crappy software and is way too expensive for any company to do.

Oh wait, there are several companies doing that already, never mind.

I buy graphics cards for their hardware, and I expect the software to utilize the hardware as best it can, and if anyone can help with that and with fixing bugs etc then all the better.

On the specific point of arguing "IP" politics though, do you honestly think the world has better graphics hardware right now because of the closed nature of graphics drivers? Because guess what, it's usually competition which spurs the development of better technology, competition which drives innovation in the world, so to tell me with a straight face that without the secrecy and closed nature of Nvidia's and ATI's graphics drivers, graphics technology would be further behind than if it were more open and there was more competition for making better hardware instead of screwing around with driver secrecy, that'd be a feat. I believe that most all patents and secrecy now days is nothing but harmful. In a world that's so inter-connected, there are very few examples I can find for justifying monopolies on ideas. They most always serve only to make the rich richer and poor poorer. (See Microsoft's patent FUD, for example, and try to tell me that did any good for the rest of the world.)

Re:Almost unbelievable

[rtb61]

It is likely they went through a process of discovery. The discovered that keeping the software open source has very little impact upon maintaining competitive advantage on the hardware or making innovative leaps in hardware design and keeping those proprietary. For hardware producers, software is just another overhead and working to minimise that cost makes sense.

There is a real push to achieve low cost ubiquitous computing, UMPC's, smartphone/PDA etc. and every cost saving makes it far more achievable and obviously maintains reasonable profit margins for the hardware manufacturers.

At the moment hardware manufacturers find their profit margins squeezed while their products are carrying closed source proprietary software with 10 times the profit margin, it makes absolutely no business sense as a hard ware manufacturer to put up with this. I am sure most hardware manufacturers thought that M$'s idea of free hardware and 'renting' the software was a load of B$.

Alt-Left-Click Message on Everex 7" Laptop

[Yfrwlf]

In the description in the link for it, it actually informs the user about needing to move some windows around due to all the buttons not being visible, something that has been a common problem while running desktops that weren't really made for low resolutions like Gnome. That's really something that should be fixed and I'm surprised it hasn't been by now. Some way for X to detect that there is no way for a window to fit on the screen and add some scrolly bars to it to make everything accessible. Perhaps it's purely the fault of the window manager or library though and not X, or maybe it's both?

Re:Arrghhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

  The whole argument for FOSS 3D video card drivers is just silly in my opinion. Very very very few people have the skills necessary to write good drivers for these chips (others can learn, but that takes months or years to do). The people who write these drivers do it as a full time job, and the drivers are some of the most important IP in a graphics card (if they were released under a gpl like license, it would be much easier for a new competitor to develop a product).

What about the SuSE radeonhd developers? They work full time. You speak as if programming 3D graphics is rocket science. It is rocket science, if you don't have the specs. Otherwise, it would have been done YEARS ago.

Re:Arrghhhh

[shermozle]

And in five years' time, when they've stopped supporting your card in the latest kernel version, you do what?

Re:Arrghhhh

[Vanders]

The whole argument for FOSS 3D video card drivers is just silly in my opinion.

It makes excellent sense if your whole world is not limited to X.org. There are lots [syllable.org] of [haiku-os.org] other [reactos.org] platforms [directfb.org] that can benefit from Open drivers.

Re:Might already be there, depending on purpose

[DrSkwid]

wtf are you on about, why would a firewall need a fast blit ?

I would guess you don't know shit about what a vga card does.

Re:Might already be there, depending on purpose

[Lonewolf666]

Even a server or firewall needs some configuration. With the driver VIA has just released, there is an Open Source driver that can display text and 2D graphics. Which will do nicely for a typical GUI (Ubuntu?), so you are not limited to the console.

Now 4 drivers?

[Mike McTernan]

I think this now brings the total drivers for the Chrome chipset to 4. There's already:

- Via proprietary binary drivers (support some 3D acceleration and TVout, but only available for specific distro/kernel combinations)
- Unichrome drivers (focus on code quality rather than features, so no 3D accel and TVout)
- Openchrome drivers (used in most distros, support some of the features, but imperfect and seem not to support Compiz)
- The new Via FOSS drivers (2D only at present)

Why couldn't VIA just contribute to one of the existing projects or send them docs and maybe funding? That would have been truely embracing open source.

I'd be interested to know if Via tried to contact any of the uni/openchrome developers.

Re:Almost unbelievable

[TheLink]

Their business is selling hardware (for now anyway).

If they open source the drivers, there's a chance that they can cut costs - there's a significant chance someone _else_ (redhat, suse, ubuntu, etc) might end up doing the work of keeping the drivers for the _old_ hardware working with the various Linux kernels out there.

Then their in-house coders can do the presumably more "interesting" stuff like write drivers for the newer hardware (esp pre-release hardware - in the initial stages you might end up having to change specs, after release you can send it to the open source bunch).

Re:Might already be there, depending on purpose

[the_B0fh]

I hate to say it, but do you understand the concept of a firewall? You know, a hardened box running the minimum software necessary to inspect and pass/stop traffic?

Typically, it does not include a gui for a pretty interface.

Just saying.

Re:Arrghhhh

[Jorophose]

There's a reason why you don't run old distros, you don't want to get behind for other packages, and then get wacked by vulnerabilities in your browser.

Some of us can't add in new cards when the old one goes unsupported. What about those of us with those slimline PCs OEMs love? nVidia/ATI is going to make me a PCI HD3450?

Please.

Free software drivers are the most important aspect of a free software kernel. Linux without radeon/intel/nv/radeonhd is not worth using. So fucking what if it means I only get 2D accel properly. I don't game much under linux right now, and if I did, I'd just have to enable with "one checkbox and it 'just works'". That's what the ATI drivers aren't. And what the nvidia drivers aren't, either.

You're never going to get "just works" with proprietary drivers. ATI drivers still have xv tearing and wine issues (wine fixable xv kind of not). nVidia's drivers have been having some serious issues, too. Not to mention their latest GPUs are in serious trouble from every end of the table.