Decent Linux Drivers: Seriously, what is going on?

[x_sa07]

hi
iam new to this site,and iam new to linux too
i have faced the same problem of all the via users
my laptop is fujitsu-siemens 3135 with via vn896 gc
i read the petition started here and i see that its a good thing so iam working now to a translation to arabic.

plz inform me if any thing new happens thanks in advance.

[Gusarapo]

hi!
I am also new in this site.
I have a VIA EPIA CN motherboard with VIA C7 nanoBGA2 1,0GHz and i had a lot of problems with my graphic chip in Linux.

I have signed the petition because I want buy a Cloudbook UMPC but I don't want have problems again with my graphics drivers in Linux.

[wateenellende]

I wrote a little article about this situation, directed at VIA's management. I've tried to explain everything that they should know to find a solution for our problems.

For those interested:
http://cui.unige.ch/~beekhof/via.pdf

[Super Coco]

wateenellende, thank you very much for your effort in writing that article about the current situation. I like it a lot and I find that it describes very well the situation with the current VIA drivers.

Also, I have enjoyed a lot reading it in "LaTeX flavor"... Very appropriate ;-)

[takitam]

I wouldn`t be so hurray-optimistic about this. In fact, after years of via`s claims to support linux, I do not believe in rapid actions in changing that state. It is all time killing - we`re waiting and waiting for proper drivers and the warranty for our hardware is slowly but inevitabilly expiring if it hasn`t already. What I just want to say is that if we won`t see actions from via side (who exactly are they meeting with, when and where is that all going), we can not be sure that something will ever go in a correct direction.

[antoniocaputo]

I completely agree with you

[wateenellende]

Of course there is all reason to be cautious, or even pessimistic. And even if good changes come, they will be slow.

Still, we must do all that we can, despite the small chances of success -- because if we don't, we will certainly get nowhere.

[trundhem]

I joined this forum just to say THANKS!!!
Up until now I have always felt pressed to buy an extra graphics card to the "budgetcomputer" that I use, now I feel a new hope...

[rafelbev]

The link to the Italian press made quite a good hit since most of the latest signatures were from Italy. The support for this petition is already on the good track.

I also posted a link to this petition (and forum) on the Gentoo forums (Gentoo Forums :: View topic - Petition for decent support of VIA video drivers). Fedora Madriva and SuSE forums should also be tackled since the install script claims "support" for those platforms.

[SergeiFranco]

I actually signed up to post a similar thread about my mishaps with VIA EPIA EN15000 board, and (not) surprisingly found this thread so I will post my rant here:
Here is the story:
I am using VIA EN15000 mini-ITX board as a Carputer (CarPC), I am having problems with smart jacks, as there is no provision in amixer/kmix to switch them on as outputs, I have trawled the viaarena forums, searched here, googled... no luck.
Is there any way to switch them on as outputs (eg Line-in and Mic jack to output other channels). I am sick of situation where such things are trivial in Windows.


VIA claims that they support linux, but in fact it is a biggest lie, there is nothing that they have working drivers for. NOTHING. I am very frustrated with this. Unichrome fiasco (solution - openchrome but it is not 100%), audio driver (solution?), acpi not properly supported (solution acpi =force in menu.list), unstable hardware (no soultion for that), dodgy bios (will update it when I finish with all the fiddling). Someone might point me to the Linux section on viaarena, but has anyone tried to make these drivers work other than the FC3/4? Why would they support some distribution that is slowly getting lost into obscurity? Why not support the most popular distribution with massive user base like (k,edu,x)Ubuntu? That is not a proper support in my books. I would rather see VIA release specs to the community and let community make things work.
VIA you let me down again (again because of very poor performance on KT/KM chipset I had experience with). I would definitely not buy this board if VIA did not claim support for Linux!
The time I spent fixing stuff could of gotten me 10 boards, if I was working instead. Screw you VIA, I am not buying anything made by you, until you fix your stuff (or remove lies from you product description).


which was originally posted here:
VIA mini-ITX EN15000 Surround Sound (Smart 5.1) not working. VIA lies. - Ubuntu Forums


EDIT: I just singed the petition and was #3557, by my calculations if a VIA customer spent on average $300 (like I did) on VIA hardware, then they would have at least $1,000,000 from Linux customers. That is right - with current "support" VIA ripped off at least 1 million dollars from customers.

I would like to comment that petition should also cover other stuff like sound drivers as well. The main reason why I bought VIA product is because of the sentence worded similar to "Linux is fully supported" on VIA's website, by fully supported I thought to be full 3D support, full "Smart 5.1", full ACPI support etc. The purpose of the VIA product (low power mobile application) that I bought, is to use highly customisable OS that will consume little resources which Windows IS NOT AND NEVER WILL BE.