http://www.penultima.org/~rrsvideo/

[Hpar_]

EVERYONE goto that page and read it and sign the petition. less than 300 people have signed it which is really messed up. all the linux people need is the data sheets on that MGA chip and a driver can be developed for the linux community. anything is better than nothing which is the sad state of affairs now the way matrox supports their products. I heard from someone who lived down the street from matrox corporate headquarters a bunch of employees have recently been fired. he said it was in the local news paper and stuff. something is up with that and it does not sound good. is it an indication of worse economic times ahead? yes it is.

[Ribbit]

Wow, something semi-relevant from Hpar_... I'm so speechless I might even refrain from mentioning the way he spammed every other forum with it...

Unfortunately, I feel I should take a couple of quotes from the linked page (emphasis mine):

July 15th, 2001 - I have created a petition at PetitionOnline. It opens August 1st I believe, and closes January 1st, 2001. So we need lots of signatures in that time.

So it might be a little late to sign, methinks.

August 14th, 2002 - Everyone asks me about this, so I'm gonna make it clear. There is no driver code. No one is working on this. Don't buy an RRS. If you have one and want to work on the driver, then talk to me, I'll do what I can to help. In the meantime, talk to Matrox.

What can I add? Matrox don't want to give programming specs for the RRS out. If you care that your video capture board be well-supported under Linux or another alternative OS, you shouldn't buy a RRS, just as you shouldn't buy a Parhelia. There are plenty of well-supported capture cards out there (e.g. virtually anything based on the Bt848 and derivatives). Find a good supported card, buy it, and tell Matrox why you bought that one and not theirs. I'll stop here, I'm starting to foam at the mouth.

[Hpar_]

haha, well put ribbit. well put. I was just trying to give some exposure to these linux people. it is a patheticlly hopeless situation with matrox these days it seems. oh well, it was worth a try.

[leech]

On the upside the Matrox Marvel G400-TV DOES work with all it's capture stuff in linux I had it set up myself at one point in time, of course the Marvel is kind of going to waste in my Mom's PC right now. But it does work.

Leech

[albatorsk]

It's really a shame, since Matrox used to be good to the user community. But then all of a sudden things changed.

As far I know, none of their capture cards has worked well in linux (except perhaps for the Marvel G400, no thanks to matrox I'm sure), but now days they're not even giving out whitepapers for their ordinary graphics chips. And we all see how well this has worked out. The Parhelia has been on the market for a year, and the drivers are still pre-alpha quality with a lot of standard features missing.

Back in 96-99, I used to recommend Matrox cards to linux users since I knew how well they work, but I would never do the same today. Just look at the G550 and the DVI-bug! I mean, it can take up to a full minute, sometimes more, for X to start when using a G550, and it's been like this forever. Matrox is just sitting on the driver source, not fixing it.

The Parhelia might very well be the last Matrox card for me, ever, but of course it's hard to tell what the future will bring. Maybe they'll do a one eighty and suprise us all, but then again, why should they? They probably think that they'll make more money the way they're acting right now, so I'm not overly optimistic.

[leech]

I agree, but look at the competitors, it's not much better. Though nVidia actually has decent Linux drivers, they're still closed source. It just sucks that people who try to use alternate OS's end up always getting the shaft from hardware vendors.

Leech