[Bug 63352] Re: Creative labs X-Fi sound card unsupported

[Shendai]

Hello,

You bring up a great point regarding driver support, and going forward I
would not buy a Creative product.  Not just because of their substandard
Linux support but also for their fiasco with crippling their drivers for
Vista users.  I agree that for the most part the Linux community in
general is great about offering support for most hardware.  A few items
have had persistent challenges - one of which is X-Fi support.

I believe what you're hearing is not so much anger but frustration and
disappointment about the reality that while Ubuntu can almost completely
wean us off Windows (~98% of the time or more), not having proper sound
support is a deal breaker for many.  It's aggravating to have a robust,
reliable OS like Ubuntu hobbled by this limitation.  If you take even a
cursory look at the Ubuntu help boards you'll see that this issue comes
up frequently and without resolution.  For what its worth there was one
poster that gave detailed instructions that involved compiling the
kernel yourself and using a modified version of the Creative drivers.
I've personally tried this and it can get you marginal 2-channel sound,
but it stutters and many features still don't work.  I'd be happy to
contribute to a reverse engineering effort of the X-Fi hardware, I've
got some marginal programming experience however I've not seen an
organized effort to make this happen - not even from ALSA.  There's a
substantial community of users who would really like to see this hurdle
overcome.  If there is a way for us to contribute, please let us know
how?

Cheers,
~Greg

----------------------------------------
> From: launchpad at rowk.com
> To: Shendai at hotmail.com
> Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:13:13 +0000
> Subject: Re: [Bug 63352] Re: Creative labs X-Fi sound card unsupported
> 
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 5:58 PM, Shendai  wrote:
>> I never would have thought I'd need to use WINDOWS to get good sound.
>> It's unfathomable, really.
> 
> Windows isn't giving you good sound, Creative is with drivers. Tell
> Creative you are a customer and you want them to support Linux, or
> vote with your wallet for a company who already does. The problem is
> that as soon as users abandon Linux because of poor driver support,
> they tell the companies that they don't need to be supporting Linux!
> It says, "I'd like for you to have Linux drivers, but I'll still buy
> it if it doesn't and will use a different OS if need be". Imagine you
> are in the companies position; it doesn't sound very profitable or
> useful to support Linux, does it?
> 
> I definitely understand the strong desire to have support here, but I
> think a lot of the anger (and there definitely is unnecessary anger in
> some of the comments here) is directed at the wrong place. Canonical
> is providing a free product and doing a pretty impressive job of
> reverse-engineering support for companies who ignore them, but they
> can only go so far. Creative is the company that is taking your money
> and not living up to your expectations, not Ubuntu, IMO.
> 
> For the people mentioning accessibility, is it just that you need
> sound, say for the blind or vision-impaired? Can't a cheap PCI or USB
> sound card solve the issue in a usable way? Sorry if my ignorance in
> this area is causing me to miss something; I am just trying to
> understand the issues, so please let me know.
> 
> -- 
> Creative labs X-Fi sound card unsupported
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/63352
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> 
> Status in The Linux Kernel: New
> Status in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “linux” source package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
> Status in “linux-source-2.6.17” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> 
> Bug description:
> New PC has this card. It's unsupported as far as i can tell.
> 
> Please make it work :)
> 
> 06:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs Unknown device 0005
> 	Subsystem: Creative Labs Unknown device 0021
> 	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
> 	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium>TAbort- SERR-  	Latency: 64 (1000ns min, 1250ns max), Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
> 	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
> 	Region 0: I/O ports at ec00 [size=32]
> 	Region 1: Memory at fbe00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
> 	Region 3: Memory at f4000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
> 	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
> 		Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
> 		Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
> 	Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
> 		Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000

-- 
Creative labs X-Fi sound card unsupported
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/63352
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