SiS 671/672 Graphics: OpenGL/3D driver

[rekado]

related to:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=615094


I haven't heard of a single Linux user who would have installed the 3D drivers for the SiS 6717&72 Mirage 3 graphics chip.

Mr. Barros Lee of SiS in Taiwan wrote the 3D driver and internally released it, however, SiS refuses to publish the driver to end-users (that's us) but allegedly only gives it to mainboard manufacturers. I asked the manufacturer of my wife's laptop (Haier, a big Chinese consumer electronics comapny), but they didn't know of a driver for Linux. Mr. Lee is not allowed to release the driver himself; only a 2D driver can be sent to end-users which - in my case - performs pretty badly.

As there is no way of getting the driver at the moment and most probalby neither in the near future, I thought we should try to build it ourselves.

I've got no experience whatsoever in programming drivers, but I have been working as a software developer for a while now and am experienced in microcontroller programming. I don't know what is required to write a driver for the chip, but I would like to volunteer for working in a team of people who know more.

Is there anybody willing to participate? If you've got any information that could be helpful in the process please post it. If you've got a machine with this chip you could volunteer as a tester.

I don't know if anything usable will come out of this idea, but I really hope we will be able to solve this problem.

Rekado

[soxs]

Doing such a project requires _A_ _LOT_ of knowledge, though only a very minor minority suffers from the lack of a sis graphics driver.
I would suggest to:
A) start a petition
B) ask canonial to ask the guy who wrote the driver
BEFORE trying to rebuild it yourself, which will take plenty of tie and resources.. with variang success, not being guuarantied at all..

[rekado]

I once read that it's a myth that only rocket scientists can develop graphic drivers... but I sure agree with what you've said: it is a lot of work requiring a lot of knowledge.
From what I've learnt SiS would want a significant amount of money to be paid for the driver - would Canonical be likely to get this driver when it seems that not even the mainboard manufacturers (who should be able to get it) got it?
Should I just write an email to Canonical? I wish I could know how many Linux users actually would benefit from the driver.

[soxs]

I am not sure about what to do, but you might file a bugreport explaining what would be required to do... can't of anything else at the moment..

[dub_u]

I wish I could know how many Linux users actually would benefit from the driver.

Hi, I would be more than happy if this "mystery" 3D driver of Barros Lee's came out of the darkness and available for the public use.
And as far as I have checked this forum, there is quite a lot of people who would benefit from the driver.

[rekado]

Asking Canonical seems to be a bit difficult (I know, if that is considered difficult how should we start writing a driver on our own...) - there is no contact address that would seem appropriate for our request.

A bugreport would not help much, this is not even a feature request. Actually we would just like to have someone pay for getting the driver and including it in following Ubuntu versions.

Barros Lee said that he is not allowed to release any hardware specifications of the chip, so writing a driver could be even more difficult than it is already...

[soxs]

You may try the first address you can find for canoncial, you may get further info where to go...

[dcardinale]

please sign me up as one who would benefit from an improved driver. interstingly, the driver for the sis card in ubuntu 8.04 worked just wonderfully. why is that driver missing in 8.10? is there someone we can contact to get that driver back to fully functioning??
I am afraid I may have to jump ship an move to Mandriva who has a fully functioning driver for the SIS chipset.

Dan

[dub_u]

I am afraid I may have to jump ship an move to Mandriva who has a fully functioning driver for the SIS chipset.

I am running Mandriva One 2009 since it was released and it solved both the graphics problems I had (2D anyway, no support for 3D here either) and my wireless issue.
Out of the box support for 2D graphics, and after a firmware upgrade the Intel iwl4965AGN worked as well.

Yet I sometimes miss "my" Ubuntu. Luckily I have a dual boot with 7.10, and that has been useful, since the USB support is less OOB in Mandriva.
I couldn't connect my digital camera, but it was recognized from the start by Ubuntu.

Sorry for the off topic parts of this post, but I just wanted to clear out some details pro-mandriva and pro-ubuntu
Frustrating, though that I need them both to get (almost) full functionality.

I also tried to install the Satux driver in Ubuntu 7.10 but that only left me with a 800x600 resolution that I can't get rid of
I am working on that.....