The "it will play host to drivers" isn't encouraging. Drivers should go into Linus tree, not some website. The only reason to put up drivers on a website is if they're not good enough to make it into mainline!

If the VIA linux engineers is looking for something to do, they could make sure that upstream openssl/openssh support _AND ENABLE_ Padlock per default and that this works in downstream distribution packages.

I don't know about the rest of you, but libssl isn't something I elect to compile and update on my own.

Now, I'm one of the biggest VIA supporters on this site, and I wish I had the cash to buy every EPIA that's released.

However, they ALSO said they were going to be big supporters of Linux back in 2005, and the driver source that they released still contained compiled binary components. And a while back I had nothing but problems getting their video drivers to do much of anything game-wise in Linux.

I'm interested to see what they produce, but I won't be surprised if it falls short of what most would expect (ideally) from an annoucement like this.

about time