To be able to use Manufacturers Drivers?

[Elvis]

Well you can tell that I'm a Newbie.
I'm still having problems getting my system up and running. Just for me to boot AV5.0.3 and run it, on boot up I had to add pci=acpi  acpi=off whats that all about?, but if I don't it won't run. The nvidia drivers are not vary good their so so, I still can not get my sound working with HDMI, my HDMI comes out the computer into a Pioneer Receiver then out to my moitor. The drivers for windows works fine. No drivers for my CD/BluRay drive so AV-Linux just does not see it at all.
So, theres gotta to be a better way to install drivers.
So, at the moment I'm at a standstill and I want to get back into mixing down my music, I'm so excited and want so badly to use AV-Linux for mixing down my music.
Thanks for Listing
Elvis

P.S. I have received some great help from a lot of nice programers with my AV5.0.3

[danboid]

Hi Elvis!

Welcome to the forums and hopefully we can get all your hardware working properly. This wasn't quite the right board on this forum but I'll see what I can do to help regardless.

If AV Linux won't boot without ACPI=off it means your computers power management is properly supported by the Linux kernel (yet?) so that may be fixed in a newer kernel.

You don't say if you're using nouveau, which are the open source and standard xorg Nvidia drivers or the proprietary and fully-featured Nv nvidia driver?

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Will tell you that

As for HDMI audio playback - I've found smplayer to be good for that as it lets you pick HDMI out for your audio if it is being seen.

[trulan]

Hi again, Elvis.

If your hardware is not supported in Linux, that is usually because the manufacturer does not consider Linux important enough to offer support.  Also, you have a pretty new system which makes hardware support a bigger problem.  Given time, support will usually make it into the Linux kernel.  If the manufacturer is not willing to invest some resources into developing Linux support for their hardware, support has to be developed by some kernel hacker/programmer somewhere on their own time, and this understandably can take a while.  Good hardware support in Linux typically runs a year or more behind good support under Windows, except in cases like Intel where the manufacturer is quite involved in Linux development.  But even with Intel, Windows support gets priority, because most personal computers are sold with Windows licenses and it has to work with Windows in order to be sold.

NVidia GPU's are an especially difficult case.  They do offer Linux drivers, but they keep their source code closed.  As a result, there is nothing the Linux community can do to fix issues with NVidia's drivers, that can only be done by NVidia themselves.  That leaves users of NVidia graphics hardware (which is excellent hardware, by the way) with two choices:  1. Use NVidia's proprietary closed-source drivers and be at NVidia's mercy for fixes, or 2. Use the reverse-engineered Nouveau drivers that come with the Linux kernel, but were programmed without any help or information from NVidia, the hardware manufacturer.

Blu-ray discs are also a problem, because the ultra-strict copy protection that is foundational to the blu-ray platform is diametrically opposed to the free and open principles that GNU-Linux is built upon.  There seems to be an application you can buy that will play blu-ray discs - I found this via Google:  https://www.ebower.com/docs/ubuntu-bluray/.  Sorry so much of that page is 'greek'...

Now, getting the system to 'see' your blu-ray drive and read audio cd's and dvd's is a different issue than decrypting blu-ray discs.  And that, we can hopefully get figured out and working.  It would probably good to focus on one thing at a time, and the first thing should be getting your sound situation figured out.

Wee I gotta go, I do AVLinux stuff on my own time too (because I use it and enjoy it), in addition to having a day job, a family, and being an amateur musician.  Have a good day!

[Elvis]

To All
I came over here not looking for help, I only wanted to voice out that some how we need to get maybe third party companies to put out drivers for Linux users or is their away we can use third party software drivers made for windows to be used on Linux systems. May Be If All Linux Users Sent Third Party Companies a Flood of Emails, may be they might listen.
I did not mean to drag my problems over here on this side, I think I better go back to the other side of the fence. I was just trying to make a point. Sorry
See Ya
Elvis

[danboid]

Thanks to the runaway success of Android, drivers for Linux will be (are) less and less of an issue, or at least certainly for mobile and embedded hardware. Sadly, Android doesn't use x.org like 'desktop Linux' so its not going to improve graphics driver support but AMD, Intel and now Nvidia too are all members of the Linux Foundation so they do take it pretty seriously as gone are the days when big tech companies could ignore the penguin although it undeniably takes 3rd place after Win and OSX in mindshare, manf. support. and most importantly users.

Buying hardware for Linux today is the same procedure as it has always been in that you really need to do your homework before you buy anything to make sure it will work well (or at all) with Linux, its just that more stuff 'just works' these days which is nice!

[linuxdsp]

@Elvis:

is their away we can use third party software drivers made for windows to be used on Linux systems.

Almost certainly not.

Unfortunately while (desktop) linux has only a single figure percentage of the market, manufacturers are unlikely to be interested.  In linux audio especially (which is a very very very small niche within a very very small niche market generally) it has always been difficult to get hardware manufacturers interested in providing linux drivers (and I have every reason to suspect that video is the same.  I may be completely wrong, but I think, historically, perhaps there was more support for video on linux by established manufacturers as a side-effect of providing support for HPC linux systems e.g. render 'farms' used by movie / animation companies etc who were prepared to finance the development)
For Video drivers it could be there's more of an issue with the open-source aspect since a huge amount of investment goes into the hardware, and the software embedded in the drivers is an increasingly significant part of that design.  It would be unrealistic to expect hardware manufacturers to open up that intellectual property for free.
For audio, there is less of an issue because most of it isn't ground-breaking (with the possible exception of built-in DSP. e.g. there are not that many new ways to get a block of audio samples in and out of an ADC / DAC card...)
For audio device drivers, the annoying issue is that manufacturers could provide enough information to allow anyone who wanted to, to write e.g. an alsa driver, without necessarily giving away how the internal architecture works, in which case the cost to the hardware manufacturer would be negligible and their product would be more popular as a result.
All you can do, if you decide against buying a particular piece of hardware due to lack of linux support, is politely let the manufacturer know that this was the reason they lost a sale.
If they don't think they are losing significant sales prospects, then there will be no incentive to do anything.

All of that said, there is better and more hardware support than at any other time for linux, so increasingly things do 'just work' but its worth doing some research before buying anything specifically for use with linux
 

[danboid]

Elvis:

I forgot to mention that there is a project underway whose eventual goal is just what you want ie it aims to let you use Windows drivers (and other software, like wine already does) with the Linux kernel but its still in its early stages:

http://www.longene.org/en/aboutproject.php

Note that there is already ndiswrapper which has long let you use Windows network drivers under Linux and if you have a laser printer that lacks a Linux driver as well as generic postscript support then you can quite often use the same ppd file as is used under Windows to get it working.

[linuxdsp]

ndiswrapper is kind of a special case, which does not necessarily mean it would be possible to make other types of Windows drivers work.