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Creative Releases X-Fi Drives as Open Source

Posted in Linux on November 9, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Creative has been promising drivers for quite some time now, and I’ve got an X-Fi still sitting in its box after discovering its lack of support in Linux. My rather expensive Shure SM7A setup feels rather pointless when using on board sound for recording in Audacity. So after years of wait and appalling closed-source binaries released, Creative has decided to release the code to the Open Source community, which can only mean good news for the rest of us.

There is enough of a community out there, that if you simply document your product and release the specifications - the drivers will get written. Of course, they don’t have to start from scratch either, as they can use other drivers as a basis and assimilate the X-Fi into the collective. This is seen a lot with network drivers. Frankly, developing a closed source driver was a big waste of resources when they could have simply chucked some code and documentation together and then let the OS community fill in the gaps.

One of the issues here, is that what makes Creative’s products unique is not just the hardware, but the software itself. You buy the card for both. I’m fairly sure I remember reading about people buying the cheaper Creative cards and using hacked drivers to enable the extra functions - so they are obviously trying to protect such things by keeping their drivers closed source. Are we now going to see Creative produced software technology being applicable to on-board sound devices, perhaps off-loaded to the CPU instead of the dedicated sound chip (that’s what all those cores are for - right?).

The market for sound cards has become very niche over the last few years - with most people quite happy to use on board sound instead. If Creative had to survive by sound card sales alone, they would been long gone. Does this release show a sign of giving up, perhaps a feeble gesture disguised as an embrace of the community? A quick Google turns up that “Creative Labs will be dismissing the majority of its employees across Europe”. Now join the dots and we see this is a great way of cutting budget. Still, at very least - this will make for an excellent case study that may well encourage other manufacturers to open up their drivers too. I’ll let the chaps at Phoronix fiddle a little first before I pull out my card - but it should be interesting.

Google has found itself in the news a little with mention of several Android bugs found - and patched I might add. The root access issue is frankly alarming that something so major could get through, but then we are reminded that the passcode on the iPhone does sweet FA. Anyone who codes will tell you how easily bugs happen, even in the simplest of systems - so let’s not start judging just yet. With today’s fast product turn around, it’s no wonder more are slipping through the net.

I’ve still been too busy to try Ubuntu 8.10 in any detail - partly because I’m running Mint Linux, which hasn’t been upgraded from 8.04 yet. It’s very tempting to switch back, but this machine is running so nicely! Anyone who is using Ubuntu might find these 50 top tips quite useful. I’m certainly going to have to try the “profile” Kernel option - it’s news to me!