[Openal] openal future

[Jason Daly]

Yvan Vander Sanden wrote:
> You see unsupported drivers for linux quite a lot. So if I check for
> an available driver on the companies website before I buy the
> hardware, that's now not enough anymore. I should also check forums to
> see if the announced driver is actually any good. Ok, I'll have to
> remind that.
>   

I can hear your sarcasm  :-)  Still, unsupported means exactly that.  
You're buying at your own risk.

It's good practice to get feedback on any device and support before 
making a purchase, even with a Windows product.  I've had terrible 
experiences with things like video capture cards (particularly with the 
lack of quality drivers).  This problem isn't limited to Linux (although 
I agree it does seem to occur far more often there).


>> Creative never promised anything of the kind.  I've met a couple of the
>> Creative folks personally, and there was never any business decision
>> made to support Linux.
>>     
>
> The internet archive shows otherwise. Of course you won't see the
> announcement nowadays, but they promised one in 2006.
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20061214142854/http://opensource.creative.com/
>   

They announced a driver, but there was never any promise or guarantee of 
full, commercial support for it.  Even when I read that announcement, I 
never expected anywhere near the support that the Windows drivers and 
apps get.  To think otherwise would be naive to me.  Maybe I've just 
been at this long enough to know what to expect, so when things like 
this happen I'm not so disappointed as newer folks might be.

I know what you're saying, though.  Like most people, I was disappointed 
at what was eventually provided (especially the fact that no native 
OpenAL implementation ever came out).  Most likely what happened is that 
they underestimated the scope of the task (writing a full-featured 
driver for hardware that complex has to be a big job).  This is probably 
why the driver was late, and when it did finally come out, it was 
severely lacking (x64 and 2.4 kernels only, among other things).

Commercial support for Linux drivers is unfortunately hard to come by.  
Nvidia doesn't officially support their graphics drivers in Linux either 
(even though their support is generally pretty good).  It'll be a long 
time before this changes.  Maybe you understand why I'm rooting so much 
for the open-source driver now  :-)

--"J"

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