[nylug-talk] Video Cards....

[Joseph M. Gaffney]

On Monday 06 November 2006 23:26, jh wrote:
> Joseph M. Gaffney wrote:
> > It's a shame, isn't it?
> >
> > Then there are Ageia, SiS, and XGI.
> >
> > I think contacting XGI is a worthwhile effort, I'm going to test that
> > route... I'll post up what I find out.
> >
> > -Joseph M. Gaffney aka CuCullin
>
> You're leaving out VIA/S3.
>
> It looks like S3 is the only company still trying to be an alternative
> to the Big Two. Moreover, they're (AFAIK) the only video chip company
> that has made anything like a recent stab at providing open drivers.
>
> The last thing that I could find was this:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/y7locf
>
> The tarball appears to only have source, no blobs, but I only took a
> cursory look. It is only for their integrated stuff, not for the newer
> stuff on the s3graphics.com site.
>
> It appears to me that VIA tried to do _something_ for OSS, and that the
> market didn't bite, preferring the closed drivers of the bigger guys.
> Kind of hard to bitch and moan if that is in fact the case.
>
> I know that VIA has made different attempts to capture our market, but
> has had only limited success. A shame, as their other stuff is _great_
> under Linux - core chipsets, ethernet. The encryption stuff in their
> CPUs is totally supported by OpenBSD. I know I'd switch entirely over to
> their video stuff if it was an option.
>
> jh
> 

It's only integrated video though isn't it?

And I would do the same.  I would fully support even mildly over-priced 
hardware if they put out open source drivers.

If VIA/S3 is doing just that, they are doing a poor job of advertising it...

-Joseph M. Gaffney aka CuCullin