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bash
September 25th, 2007, 10:06 AM
Well after 2 years they managed to release a Linux driver for the X-Fi soundscards. Except oh well its only for 64 bit. No idea who had that brilliant idea over at Creative.

Anyways, the driver can be found here:

http://connect.creativelabs.com/linux/Lists/Announcements/DispForm.aspx?ID=3

Story on phoronix about it:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA2OQ

Freddy
September 25th, 2007, 04:02 PM
Whats the logic behing the only 64 bit release? I just cant get that. I use a 64 bit cpu but use a 32bit version of Ubuntu just because it has better support.

I really, really hate Creative but still they make the best sound cards =(.

msangil
September 25th, 2007, 04:11 PM
Jeezzzz... I'm 32 bits away from the proper driver now. Not quite bright these Creative guys anyway.

Thanks for the information mate!

igknighted
September 25th, 2007, 04:27 PM
Whats the logic behing the only 64 bit release? I just cant get that. I use a 64 bit cpu but use a 32bit version of Ubuntu just because it has better support.

I really, really hate Creative but still they make the best sound cards =(.

:), not anymore! High Def audio and video is just better on 64bit. I think with this turn of events, 64 bit Ubuntu became better supported. Java? The iced tea project has a fully open-sourced java implementation that can be used in 32 or 64 bit. Flash? nspluginwrapper works great. Creative drivers? 64 bit only. The "32 bit is better supported" argument was true for Dapper, but times have changed. 64 bit chips should run 64 bit OS now, otherwise you are holding back progress based on old assumptions that are no longer true.

starcraft.man
September 25th, 2007, 06:43 PM
Oookay... that seems very dumb. Better than nothing I suppose.

Bungo Pony
September 25th, 2007, 06:50 PM
Well, looks like my X-Fi card will remain on the shelf until I decide to move over to Ubuntu 64bit :(

Good thing I didn't pay anything for that card.

PatrickMay16
September 25th, 2007, 06:50 PM
This is crazy. You'd think they might as well not have bothered! Many don't have 64bit chips, and many of those who do don't run 64bit linux on them.

n3tfury
September 25th, 2007, 06:52 PM
I really, really hate Creative but still they make the best sound cards =(.

lol, no

FuturePilot
September 25th, 2007, 06:53 PM
About time!! Woot! :guitar:
But why only 64bit?:confused:

igknighted
September 25th, 2007, 06:59 PM
This is crazy. You'd think they might as well not have bothered! Many don't have 64bit chips, and many of those who do don't run 64bit linux on them.


But why only 64bit?

I'm 99% sure that the reason is technical, and also 99% sure that once a few more of the complications with the 32bit version are worked out they will release it as well.

This is based only on data I have read about HD stuff working better in 64bit than 32bit, and a theory I have that Creative wants something out the door to get people off their case. When the 32bit version is ready, I am sure it will be released. Until then, it's nice to have something to push people towards 64bit, because they should be doing it anyways but the community has not done a good job providing an impetus for this, and now Creative has.

Freddy
September 25th, 2007, 08:30 PM
lol, no
Well maybe not for musicians but for us ordinary people with just a few bucks in our wallet and most of our bucks we want to spend on beer and not soundcards =).

Freddy
September 25th, 2007, 08:33 PM
:), not anymore! High Def audio and video is just better on 64bit. I think with this turn of events, 64 bit Ubuntu became better supported. Java? The iced tea project has a fully open-sourced java implementation that can be used in 32 or 64 bit. Flash? nspluginwrapper works great. Creative drivers? 64 bit only. The "32 bit is better supported" argument was true for Dapper, but times have changed. 64 bit chips should run 64 bit OS now, otherwise you are holding back progress based on old assumptions that are no longer true.
Yeah I guess that you are correct but when it comes down to it, it's just to much hassle with 64bits Ubuntu. Soon we are going to have a couple of games worthy of playing and if those were compiled for a 64 bits processor I would be on board. I would make all that proprietary plugins I use to work in a 64 bit environment (yes I know I can).

igknighted
September 25th, 2007, 08:36 PM
Well maybe not for musicians but for us ordinary people with just a few bucks in our wallet and most of our bucks we want to spend on beer and not soundcards =).

I've found in recent years that onboard sound is usually as good if not better than your average sound card. My mobo (which I got for $150 bundled with an Athlon64 X2 processor) is pretty close to the equal of an X-Fi (and much nicer than an audigy) for almost all "normal" uses, without the need for dropping upwards of $100 on a PCI soundcard.


Yeah I guess that you are correct but when it comes down to it, it's just to much hassle with 64bits Ubuntu. Soon we are going to have a couple of games worthy of playing and if those were compiled for a 64 bits processor I would be on board. I would make all that proprietary plugins I use to work in a 64 bit environment (yes I know I can).

Just because the game is 32bit doesn't mean that you cannot use it on 64bit linux. I'm willing to bet (I would double check with AI here) that games such as UT2004 can be installed on 64bit Ubuntu.

The reason that plugins have a problem is that they need to interact with a browser, and they expect 32bit "language" if you will. Thats why installing 32bit firefox on your system (yes, thats possible) lets you use the plugins. nspluginwrapper acts to translate between the 32bit plugins and the 64bit browser.

So while I cannot promise that 32bit games will work in 64bit Ubuntu, I think it is more than likely. In the very least, it cannot hurt to dual boot 64bit and 32bit side by side to compare... I think you will realize that the "hassle" you fear from 64bit is greatly overstated, Just go to the 64bit forum and read the how-tos. Once you do the one extra step flash involves, you won't even know its any different (aside from faster performance in CPU intensive tasks)

bash
September 25th, 2007, 08:39 PM
Im actually getting curious if I shouldn't try 64bit Ubuntu when I update to Gutsy. Besides Flash I can't really think of anything major that is not support in 64bit.

igknighted
September 25th, 2007, 08:48 PM
Im actually getting curious if I shouldn't try 64bit Ubuntu when I update to Gutsy. Besides Flash I can't really think of anything major that is not support in 64bit.

It can never hurt to try... after all, what's the worst thing that could happen? You go back to 32bit?

Lord Illidan
September 25th, 2007, 08:56 PM
Does Intel Core 2 Duo support 64 bit? I am not sure that they do, but if they do, I might consider buying a creative X-Fi in the future...

igknighted
September 25th, 2007, 08:59 PM
Does Intel Core 2 Duo support 64 bit? I am not sure that they do, but if they do, I might consider buying a creative X-Fi in the future...

Yes

gvoima
September 25th, 2007, 09:05 PM
Well maybe not for musicians but for us ordinary people with just a few bucks in our wallet and most of our bucks we want to spend on beer and not soundcards =).

haha, so true :D

Anyways, it's good that Creative took this step even if the drivers are beta, keeps the hopes up for people with X-Fi and linux. They are great cards compared to the price, but not the best :P

I myself have a Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro and I love the hardware mixing and very good support (that's what makes creative a good card in linux) in linux world. :)

Lord Illidan
September 25th, 2007, 09:13 PM
Well, I might try 64 bit in future...

phrostbyte
September 25th, 2007, 09:44 PM
The major 64-bit killers are Flash, Wine, and crappy (yes, even crappier) ATI 64-bit drivers.

Flash seems to be mediated somewhat with nspluginwrapper and gnash improvements.
Wine seems to be able to run on 64-bit somehow, I don't know
ATI drivers still suck, but AMD is vowing to improve them

igknighted
September 25th, 2007, 10:04 PM
The major 64-bit killers are Flash, Wine, and crappy (yes, even crappier) ATI 64-bit drivers.

Flash seems to be mediated somewhat with nspluginwrapper and gnash improvements.
Wine seems to be able to run on 64-bit somehow, I don't know
ATI drivers still suck, but AMD is vowing to improve them

Ahh... I always forget wine exists...

diction
September 26th, 2007, 02:41 AM
The major 64-bit killers are Flash, Wine, and crappy (yes, even crappier) ATI 64-bit drivers.

Flash seems to be mediated somewhat with nspluginwrapper and gnash improvements.
Wine seems to be able to run on 64-bit somehow, I don't know
ATI drivers still suck, but AMD is vowing to improve them

Wine is running just fine for me on 64-bit. The only thing I ever needed it for was foobar2000 (best music player by landslide), but apart from a few plugins, it works great.


back on the original topic:
anyone managed to make these drivers work??

Known issues:

* This driver source will not compile with GCC version 4 and above.
Is it possible to downgrade gcc?

n3tfury
September 26th, 2007, 03:21 AM
Well maybe not for musicians but for us ordinary people with just a few bucks in our wallet and most of our bucks we want to spend on beer and not soundcards =).

then you really can't say creative makes the best cards. you're saying that they make a good enough card that you can afford because you'd rather spend money on alcohol.

ok.

stmiller
September 26th, 2007, 03:22 AM
The major 64-bit killers are Flash, Wine, and crappy (yes, even crappier) ATI 64-bit drivers.

Flash seems to be mediated somewhat with nspluginwrapper and gnash improvements.
Wine seems to be able to run on 64-bit somehow, I don't know
ATI drivers still suck, but AMD is vowing to improve them

Running a 32bit Firefox solves all flash issues. Just downloaded your own Firefox installer from mozilla.com. It installs flash automatically, and auto-updates itself to the latest Firefox. This is a non-issue.

WineHQ provides 64bit packages for Ubuntu 64bit (http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb). Wine runs as normal. Install it via "apt-get install wine." (That's how.)

I don't understand why there is so much confusion/false information/hatred towards 64bit.

stmiller
September 26th, 2007, 03:23 AM
Is it possible to downgrade gcc?

You can apt-get install gcc-3.something and have both versions of gcc installed. Just configure the driver by specifying the gcc version when you do configure options.

diction
September 26th, 2007, 03:52 AM
You can apt-get install gcc-3.something and have both versions of gcc installed. Just configure the driver by specifying the gcc version when you do configure options.

Thanks. It seems I need to get gcc 3.3 or 3.4. Will try it out then, I'm getting tired of having to plug my speakers every time I switch OSs.

Arathorn
September 27th, 2007, 03:16 PM
then you really can't say creative makes the best cards. you're saying that they make a good enough card that you can afford because you'd rather spend money on alcohol.
So true. Personally, I think any on-board audio chip on a fairly recent motherboard is just as good as a Creative sound card, but a lot cheaper. It's indeed better to spend the difference in money on alcohol, or else extra RAM if you need to spend it on your computer.

phrostbyte
September 27th, 2007, 03:28 PM
Running a 32bit Firefox solves all flash issues. Just downloaded your own Firefox installer from mozilla.com. It installs flash automatically, and auto-updates itself to the latest Firefox. This is a non-issue.

WineHQ provides 64bit packages for Ubuntu 64bit (http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb). Wine runs as normal. Install it via "apt-get install wine." (That's how.)

I don't understand why there is so much confusion/false information/hatred towards 64bit.

Sorry. my experiences with Dapper 64-bit was bad for these reasons. Notice how I refuted myself in the second part. I am happy 64-bit is improving much. Does Ubuntu have a 64-bit package for Wine in official repos?

Bungo Pony
September 27th, 2007, 04:12 PM
and a theory I have that Creative wants something out the door to get people off their case.

Agreed. When I initially got my X-Fi card, the only drivers that existed for it were for Vista. Oops! I scrubbed Vista in favor of Win2k and Ubuntu! I haven't checked lately to see if they've made any other drivers available, but I only need a sound card for Ubuntu and the old Creative card I have in my PC is working just fine.

Rhapsody
September 27th, 2007, 06:02 PM
I've committed myself to open source drivers for all (or at least most) of the hardware on my next PC, so this is meaningless to me. Unless there's a fully featured open source driver available for the X-Fi while I'm putting my next PC together, then it won't have an X-Fi in it.

bash
September 27th, 2007, 07:41 PM
Im wondering: Do 32-bit Windows programs work in 64-bit Wine. I wouldn't think so. But since Wine is an abstraction layer that transates Windows commands into Linx cunterparts, it ould be possible

Arathorn
September 28th, 2007, 01:35 PM
Wine interprets 32 bits Windows for Linux, whether Wine itself is running on 32 or 64 bits. However Wine will not be able to run 64 bits Windows programs, unless the Wine devs start porting all the 64 bits Windows libraries.

blueturtl
September 28th, 2007, 02:14 PM
Well after 2 years they managed to release a Linux driver for the X-Fi soundscards. Except oh well its only for 64 bit. No idea who had that brilliant idea over at Creative.

Guess they think all Linux users run state of the art systems that are too l33t to still be 32-bit.


I really, really hate Creative but still they make the best sound cards =(.

You can hate them all you want because they certainly do not make the finest soundcards. They have the most recognized brand sure, but their cards are far from best as far as sound quality goes. If you want advanced gaming features Creative is probably the only way to go, but most of those features are wasted under Linux anyway, and all that is left is mediocre quality sound. I recently purchased an M-Audio Revolution and it completely blows away anything I've ever heard from Creative (including my late Audigy2 Platinum). Much better sound. Also works in Linux.

aspushkinus
November 17th, 2007, 08:22 AM
I tried to start "Linuxing" many times, but there were a lot of troubles with software and drivers before. Recently I've installed Ubuntu 7.10 (Gusty Gibbon), I configured my VPN connection, installed all updates, installed NVidia drivers and enabled "extra effects". My old Lexmark Z45 was detected without any troble, my digital camera was recognized as I plugged it in, my NTFS drives are available for reading and even WRITING! Now it looks amazing, feels good to work with it. My wife likes drawing in Gimp, I like it as a development environment - I've installed InnoTek VirtualBox and MS Windows XP on it, so I could develop .NET prejects on windows and Java projects in Eclipse on linux.

But the only thing is bugging me - SILENCE! I think Creative did it intentionally - maybe they signed some sort of agreement with Microsoft? Or this is just a "brilliant" idea of their marketing as mentioned above?

Now I hate both Microsoft and Creative!!! :)

But here is the idea: I have build in audio card in my motherboard and it works perfectly with Ubuntu. Today almost every motherboard on market have it installed. Maybe I could create some kind of hardware switcher to switch my 5.1 system from Creative card to build in one and back? I could earn dozens of thousand of $$ selling it on Ebay!

This is my first post on Linux forums. I really like Linux, I wish it be spread as widely as Windows is and even more. We need the alternative OS, but its still pretty hard for regular user to forget shiny Windows.

:guitar: