Martin - first off, anyone has the right to complain especially when its presented in a salient way.  I recognize this is not the most important thing for everyone, and Canonical certainly has no obligation whatsoever to make a particular piece of hardware work.  Nevertheless, this continued failing is a valid point and does alienate a great many potential Ubuntu users.  I'm delighted to hear there's work being done - but how long has this been worked on now??  2+ years??

Let's not rehash the Creative drivers issue.  For Windows they're a bloated mess.  For Linux they simply don't work.

Wouldn't the most constructive path here be to simply find a real solution?

Cheers,
~Greg

----------------------------------------
> From: <email address hidden>
> To: <email address hidden>
> Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:00:00 +0000
> Subject: [Bug 63352] Re: Creative labs X-Fi sound card unsupported
> 
> Actually, there is ongoing work to support the X-Fi [1]. I think it's unfair to complain on Creative here for the lack of Linux drivers, when they have actually been available for a year or so [2] (64bit only, in beta). And this spring they released 32bit drivers as well [3].
> Last time I used Creative drivers in Windows they were bloated and crippled, and the Linux ones appears to have their issues on their own. I for one will not buy Creative hardware again because of their terrible drivers.
> I also think it's unfair of you to complain on Canonical for the lack of packed drivers, because the drivers Creative released is still in beta and doesn't always work properly.
> And for the love of everything that's holy and some things that are not, don't come dragging with the "OMG i will reinstall windows this suxx0rs" argument. Many people are working hard to support your free operating system choice, and most is not even getting paid for it. Personally I don't care much of what OS you use, as long as you let me keep my preferences and work in a OSS environment.
> 
> 1: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Njc3NQ
> 2: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4823915&postcount=675
> 3: http://connect.creativelabs.com/opensource/Wiki/SoundCard%20Support.aspx
> 
> -- 
> Creative labs X-Fi sound card unsupported
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/63352
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> 
> Status in The Linux Kernel: New
> Status in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “linux” source package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
> Status in “linux-source-2.6.17” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> 
> Bug description:
> New PC has this card. It's unsupported as far as i can tell.
> 
> Please make it work :)
> 
> 06:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs Unknown device 0005
> 	Subsystem: Creative Labs Unknown device 0021
> 	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
> 	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium>TAbort- SERR-  	Latency: 64 (1000ns min, 1250ns max), Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
> 	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
> 	Region 0: I/O ports at ec00 [size=32]
> 	Region 1: Memory at fbe00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
> 	Region 3: Memory at f4000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
> 	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
> 		Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
> 		Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
> 	Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
> 		Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000