Finally after years and a poor binary (64 bit only) driver, Creative has decided to GPL their X-Fi linux driver.

The Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card driver for Linux from Creative Labs was awful. That's simply the nicest way to put it. The driver was home to many bugs, initially only supported 64-bit Linux, and it was arriving extremely late. The open-source drivers supporting the Creative X-Fi drivers have also been at a stand still. However, Creative Labs today has finally turned this situation around and they have open-sourced the code to this notorious driver. The source-code for the Creative X-Fi driver is now licensed under the GNU GPLv2.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=arti..._gift&num=1

i hope this is a pattern. these companies clearly cannot manage their own drivers, so why try? *frustrating*


later

Creative will still be associated with snake oil products and bad reputation. I don't care what new products they come out with it's always going to be the same old story. They said the same thing about supporting "OpenAL" until they swooped in and added their own "proprietary extensions" to work with the hardware. You often wonder if they really care about the open source community at all or they are just doing it, becuase everyone is tired of their foolish games.

I heard the Vista driver for the Xi-Fi are just plain awfull. Since Microsoft moved the sound system out of the kernel, which was because of Creative's crappy drivers in the past, and for other things such as DRM.

Seems like major hardware manufactures are starting to follow AMD / ATi's Open Source strategy, which I hope I hope nVidia will do the same; but i doubt it.