S3 coming back into graphics business.

[hephasteus]

Does anyone from Redhat know anything about S3. I heard they wrote the 2d parts of the driver for linux and gave you all the info to make the 3d driver? Is that going to happen because I want to get one of these.

http://www.s3graphics.com/en/product.../chrome_530gt/

It looks like they have another card they came out with before but heard the linux drivers don't work on much. is there a way to search around in faqs and stuff on the fedora pages to find out what video cards are supported?

[Hlingler]

An very interesting and important question - but not a technical support issue, so...

Moved to Fedora Focus.

V

[hephasteus]

Originally Posted by Hlingler

An very interesting and important question - but not a technical support issue, so...

Moved to Fedora Focus.

V

Sorry I can't believe i put that in wrong column. It's brain fade night.

[Thetargos]

Originally Posted by hephasteus

Does anyone from Redhat know anything about S3. I heard they wrote the 2d parts of the driver for linux and gave you all the info to make the 3d driver? Is that going to happen because I want to get one of these.

http://www.s3graphics.com/en/product.../chrome_530gt/

It looks like they have another card they came out with before but heard the linux drivers don't work on much. is there a way to search around in faqs and stuff on the fedora pages to find out what video cards are supported?

This are indeed good news, and IIRC phoronix had a news item on this, and you can bet they'll have numbers on this card once the drivers are available. I really hope this card does become a viable alternative for graphics on Linux.

[pwca]

If the Linux support is true then S3 Graphics will move quite rapidly from being a dying on the vine graphics board company to one that is very healthy and competitve. Indeed, if S3 were to take the novel step of making the hardware open the resulting revenue streams would be impressive.

[Hlingler]

What is very interesting is that the old S3 video drivers exist in X.Org/DRI.freedesktop.org GIT repositories (http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-s3/, http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/dri...video-s3virge/), so if these new chipsets are based on the same technology, then drivers should be relatively easier to assemble. The 3D drivers are disabled and therefore absent in current Fedora builds of mesa-dri-drivers, but the 2D drivers exist (xorg-x11-drv-s3[virge]).

V

[hephasteus]

Originally Posted by Hlingler

What is very interesting is that the old S3 video drivers exist in X.Org/DRI.freedesktop.org GIT repositories (http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-s3/, http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/dri...video-s3virge/), so if these new chipsets are based on the same technology, then drivers should be relatively easier to assemble. The 3D drivers are disabled and therefore absent in current Fedora builds of mesa-dri-drivers, but the 2D drivers exist (xorg-x11-drv-s3[virge]).

V

Well they came out with a couple chips below the 530 that kind of went nowhere but they do have linux drivers that sort of work. That 530 uses 25 watts to give about same graphics capability of nvidia and ati's low end offerings and it's doing it on HALF the power. One of those glued onto motherboard of mini-itx and you got a real live HTPC system that can run any video resolution with very good graphics horsepower. As long as you don't try to run windows with it VIA's 1500mhz cpu is plenty of cpu for linux.
Now double the the size of that chip to 128 bit with 2 or 3 of them in a mATX form factor and you got a megagraphicszilla that doesn't need pounds of aluminum and copper and 50 watts of fans to keep it from exploding.
This is not the virge though. This is the chrome s20 400 and 500 series and I think they only have drivers for the s20 series. Let me look around the GIT repositories. No that's ancient history stuff.

I think i finally tracked them down.
http://www.openchrome.org/

[hephasteus]

Near as I can tell they are trying to get the 4 series certified for Red Hat Enterprise release 5.2. I still can't find squat about 530GT support or if they are doing the drivers on their own or just through the open chrome group or if the super geniuses at Red Hat are helping.