I don't wanna sound stupid or demanding. This is my first post at this forums and I am just looking for an answer.
I really would like to understand why VIA cannot release a decent set of drivers for Linux or help the community developers do their job, by helping with specs and etc.
Right now, people that want to use Linux (any distro) on PCs with VIA Graphics Chip simply can't do it decently.
Sure, you can definitely go VESA if you wanna waste more than half your CPU cicles browing pages that have at least one flash banner... Or you can try OpenChrome or Unichrome and not have 3D, MPEG and get yourself a very unstable and slow system. Ok, there's this new official driver releasd by VIA after years of pain and waiting... However, although it sort of is a cool driver, performance is still inferior to the community opensource solutions and it won't allow you to run *any* 3D app reasonably. I am not saying I can't run AIGLX+Compiz or GoogleEarth. You can trick the system into believing you actually have something similar to a video card and run this stuff. The problem is you won't have a reasonably decent performance, you won't get any stability in your system, you won't use the hardware up to 50% of what it delivers using windows drivers. This driver is clearly cr*pware.
So I just to understand this... What is going on? VIA ain't got some bucks to pay one or two guys to develop this driver for Linux?? VIA does not want their hardware to be used with Linux?? VIA is getting paid by Microsoft to piss Linux users?? People that buy desktops and notebooks based on hardware by VIA shouldn't know this stuff before paying for it? Shouldn't they know VIA simply does not care about Linux users, so they can choose hardware with video by other competitors, like nvidia, ATI, etc?
I, for example, feel tricked into buying my current notebook, as I for sure know that I will never be able to use software that demands more from video, like watching movies in a non choppy way, acessing youtube, using Google Earth, hell... playing *any* game...
Now the question is, is VIA willing to give me my money back?? Bah... Sure they're not...
This really, REALLY sux...
Effenberg
Edit John Gatt: moveing this here to the first post.
That's it, we're up and running at
DECENT VIA GRAPHICS DRIVERS FOR LINUX Petition