Linus Torvalds not happy at Nvidia over current Linux support

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CAT-THE-FIFTH

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Linus Torvalds not happy at Nvidia

Swearing involved:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...s-f2425-you-to-nvidia-over-linux-support.aspx

Basically he puts the middle finger up at Nvidia and says they have been the worst hardware company to work with(regarding Linux).

I always thought that people on forums said Nvidia had a good relationship with Linux?? Perhaps this is not the case in reality.


Watch from 48 minutes and 14 seconds onwards.
 
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People don't say that Nvidia has a good relationship with Linux. They say that Nvidia Linux drivers are typically a lot better performing than some alternatives. But then you get cases like the example given in that question, where the hardware guys will just downright refuse to do anything even remotely helpful for no particular reason. It's like phone manufacturers with stupid bloatware that if anything makes them sell less devices.
 
I dunno about a good relationship with Linux, infact they are quite hated generally within the Linux community as they tend to be very closed source orientated and protect their IP, etc. the opposite of the "fundementals" of this community. They've historically had a better reputation tho than ATI/AMD for actually having better functioning GPU drivers/support for Linux which is why they tend to be reccomended for people looking at GPUs for Linux.
 
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PermaBanned said:
I have to say the open source graphics card drivers have come on leaps and bounds recently. They're... actually usable :p
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..as long as you just want 2D. The Nvidia blob is by far the best graphics driver I have ever used on Linux. Do windows users complain about closed drivers on windows? No - they dont care and I dont either on linux.
 
Nvidia drivers are by far the best on Linux, that doesnt mean they are a good company to work with - fair play to Linus as usual.
 
Lack of Optimus support for Linux\W2k8 Server is a big downer for me, and it's something which has been posted about a fair few times on the nvidia forums too. Such a shame as I have a powerhouse ultra portable coming to me soon and it's a shame I can't use the OS' I want to use on it because of lack of graphics driver support.
 
Rroff said:
I dunno about a good relationship with Linux, infact they are quite hated generally within the Linux community as they tend to be very closed source orientated and protect their IP, etc. the opposite of the "fundementals" of this community. They've historically had a better reputation tho than ATI/AMD for actually having better functioning GPU drivers/support for Linux which is why they tend to be reccomended for people looking at GPUs for Linux.
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Damned if you do... NVIDIA can't or won't open source their drivers because they have a lot of (other people's) patents in them.

ATI have least done a reasonable job of providing a clear API to getting their cards working as basic 2d cards.

Pfft, don't care anyway. The only time I have to deal with xorg is to shout at my sysadmins for installing a GUI on a server anyway.
 
SMN said:
Nvidia drivers are by far the best on Linux, that doesnt mean they are a good company to work with - fair play to Linus as usual.
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They are a very good company to work with as proven by their unrivalled developer relations and as others have mentioned their Linux drivers are generally better than their rivals.

Linus is just being mardy because they are keen to protect their intellectual property and that's not what Linux is about.
 
I agree with all that; I think this time around Linus is being a bit silly; nvidia is the only solution for getting a functional and modern working graphic card, and they have been for years. Sure now you get Intel HD and the nouveau drivers, but they don't even do OpenGL 3.0, no geometry shaders etc

On the other hand nvidia released working drivers and allow them to be linked in into many of the most recent kernels. Without them most of the PCs running XMBC and other wouldn't be able to work at all in linux.

So they are not open source, sure, but quite frankly, I'd rather have a working video driver in first 5 years of the product release instead of having to use fbdev.

And ATI/AMD suck in comparison. Even their binary blob is even less stable that the open source attempt at making them work.
 
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