Linux Creator Drops F-Bomb on Nvidia, ''Worst Company''

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nVidia is not interested in open-source because they would be showing the world their driver-level optimization, which could potentially improve the performance of AMD products as well. Not like they hate Linux and its tiny market share for they also support Macs.

Linus is actually right because proprietary drivers are prone to stability issues when changes are made to the kernel while developers can't simply debug the driver and fix it so nVidia alone hinders kernel in the struggle to keep it up-to-date.

Optimus is a key factor for notebook/neetbook manufacturers to expand Linux portifolio (also as an alternative to Win8) as it improves battery life.
 
I understand and appreciate the sentiment and efforts shown by the hard line FOSS folks. Without them, the Linux based ecosystem would be in shambles, but there is something to be said for Nvidia too. While I'm not an open source purist, I use Linux Mint 13 on a daily basis and have since the days of LM8. I will only buy Nvidia GPUs due to the features they support within Linux, namely VDPAU. While AMD has open sourced drivers for it's hardware, my understanding is that there remains no real hardware acceleration of multimedia content and the overall performance leaves a lot to be desired. At a certain point, I just want my equipment to work and it being truly open source becomes a peripheral priority. Perhaps that makes me lukewarm in my practical support for FOSS, but I believe that to continue the growth of Linux viability, the user base must increase. The best way to do so is to provide the most functional out-of-box experience for those initially migrating from other OSs. To that end, Nvidia has done a great job providing Linux drivers with decent features and stability, albeit closed source.
 
Can't say I like NVidia. I always have used ATI/AMD. But let's face it, all companies are going to focus their efforts on endeavors that make them the most money for that company. Android may be Linux underneath, but it's not Linux. OS X has Linux underneath it, but it's not Linux. If they were, Linux could just pull over the drivers from there and there wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately for Linux, they do represent the smallest share of the software environment market. Far more people do use Windows, OS X, Android, than do use Linux. While it might be funny, or even cathartic, to hear a CEO swearing, it shows a great deal of immaturity. Cursing out a company for not helping you more is not going to get them helping you any faster or more enthusiastically. When you grow up you learn that being outlandish tends to get you attention, but doesn't often get you results.
 
[citation][nom]Dangi[/nom]Linux is way more than the 2% that you stated.Android is linux based, how many android phones are ??In the university you use linux.Almost all servers run on linuxYeah maybe the gaming market is not using linux so that's the reason why Nvidia doesn't develop drivers for them, but linux is way more than that 2% and is growing[/citation]

Actually you will see Solaris or HP Unix over Linux in most server farms today.
 
loved his response to the last guy. stayed classy while being a douche because he can. I have a feeling most of the nvidia fanboys commenting here didnt watch the video. Its damn interesting and anyone interested in the history of programming and open source should watch it completely.
 
I love nvidia and I still find it hilarious. It's been years since I've ran Linux but I remember how awful it was to attempt to run drivers. I'm assuming it's been improved, or maybe not. But honestly I don't blame nvidia for not wanting to put much money into developing drivers for their gaming cards for linux. The gaming community on linux is probably .01% or even lower. The main focus for nvidia on linux would be their server cards and phone chips.
 
Linus is an idiot and so is anyone that is on his side on this issue. Dummies have working drivers from nVIDIA but that's not good enough? It has to be in Linux code?

Go Eff Yourselves you Open Source morons. The world doesn't revolve around your sorry asses.
 
@spookyman: you do know that since Oracle bought Sun, they've pushed to replace said Solaris installs with their own Red Hat clone called Oracle Unbreakable Linux, right? And that HP has drastically reduced their shipping of HP-UX units in favour of Linux and Windows based smaller servers, right?
@jurassic512: let's take a smartphone - a reasonably powerful one, with a nice screen and a reliable battery. Said phone came out with a firmware that could do some stuff more or less properly, with a promise from the maker that they'd ship an improved, optimized, more secure build "soon". One year later, your phone has several known security issues, can't run newer software, its interface is buggy as hell and it's guzzling its battery capacity because the updated firmware never came - and the company decided to drop support for it altogether. You paid $500 for what is now a shiny stone.
Now, the firmware on this phone is open source: meaning that several people managed to get an updated build out which fixed most bugs, made the interface nicer, improved support for several yet unused hardware features, made calls more stable, and even improved battery power.
However, you can forget about watching a movie on it, or playing any 3D game: the screen is only supported through a passive frame buffer, because the graphics driver is the only piece of the software stack to not be open.

If you think this is bullsh*t, then go buy an iPhone - no one's keeping you.
 
After nearly 12 years on the market it's funny to see that this open source thing is still pretty poetic. And this is the way that the mighty inventor of Linux handles things seriously and a bunch of douchebag college nerds that don't have a single clue how market is, cheer up for him.

This is all about business dudes, not sympathy to a whining community created by a bunch of eternal Microsoft's haters, or may I say "anything not open source" haters. With arguments such as "OMG, they are using Android and bla bla" and "Oh AMD made its stuff open source", you are all showing how brilliant you are. No Mr. Linus, I don't think nobody got offended by you. Probably a major laugh by your very unnecessary words.
 
[citation][nom]jdamon113[/nom]rantoc I agree with you about phones, and some servers, but not almost servers are linux. The server market belongs to Windows. Your linux server are running mostly appliances and some hosting items, But Windows is the top in the server world. Note this just becasue I am stating this dosen't mean I am a big windows fan. I like server 2008R2, It dam good. But my favorit OS is not longer relevent in todays world. I started out as a admin 15 years ago when Sun Solaris was king. I like Solaris, You want to try something awesome, Look at it.[/citation]
Not according to most statistics.
 
[citation][nom]jdamon113[/nom]The server market belongs to Windows. Your linux server are running mostly appliances and some hosting items, But Windows is the top in the server world.[/citation]

Man I can't decide whether to laugh or facepalm when I read stuff like this. Talk about completely out of touch with the real world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Servers

Take note of Servers, Mainframes and Super computers.

Only one source has Windows share ahead of Linux; and every other statistic has Linux far ahead.

The super computer one is especially funny. As of the June 2012 ratings, Unix like OS's account for 498 out of 500 super computers. 83%(419 / 500) are some sore of generic linux, and that's not counting the ones that identify as a specific linux such as RHEL.
 
[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]Now to be fair against those bashing Nvidia after reading one article; AMD isn't much better in this respect.[/citation]

That's very true, but at least AMD drivers haven't fried any video cards.
 
@slabbo and eddieroolz: AMD publishes 2 drivers:
- Catalyst, which does like Nvidia: common code where possible between Windows and Linux, although they don't provide a BSD version
- actively taking part in the development of the open source driver by publishing hardware specs (except the video decompressor for licensing reasons) and paying a couple of developers to work on it full time.
For having tried both Nvidia and AMD hardware and drivers:
- Nvidia's driver is fast, rather stable and feature-compliant. It can also fry your card or open security hole in your stack that take 5 years to close, and not support on-the-fly screen management. Out of the box support is done through a completely independent reverse engineering effort called Nouveau, which is much better at 2D support but still has bad power management and 3D power due to lack of hardware documentation.
- AMD's Catalyst driver went from very slow, unstable and poor in 2008 to acceptable in 2009 (they rewrote the stack from the ground up), quite good in 2010 (day 1 hardware support, rather fast support for new Xorg releases), much better in 2011 (several implementation bugs were solved making it a recommendation in several Wine installs) and quite stable and well featured in 2012. The open source driver compensates the reduced number of supported platforms and absence of legacy drivers, due to its constantly improved quality: on older hardware, performance and features is on par with the last driver, on more recent hardware feature support is almost complete and performance is now improving very fast, and latest hardware gets partial support within a few days.
 
[citation][nom]DRosencraft[/nom]Can't say I like NVidia. I always have used ATI/AMD. But let's face it, all companies are going to focus their efforts on endeavors that make them the most money for that company. Android may be Linux underneath, but it's not Linux. OS X has Linux underneath it, but it's not Linux. If they were, Linux could just pull over the drivers from there and there wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately for Linux, they do represent the smallest share of the software environment market. Far more people do use Windows, OS X, Android, than do use Linux. While it might be funny, or even cathartic, to hear a CEO swearing, it shows a great deal of immaturity. Cursing out a company for not helping you more is not going to get them helping you any faster or more enthusiastically. When you grow up you learn that being outlandish tends to get you attention, but doesn't often get you results.[/citation]

OSX is based on FreeBSD, not Linux. They are similar, but they are not the same. Wondering why they can't use OSX drivers is like wondering why Windows 2000 drivers won't work in Windows 7. Sure, they're both Windows and have a lot of similar code, but they are not the same and are also very different.

About Android, it's also not the same. Not only does Android use hardware that is very different from desktop/laptop hardware, but it is also not really just a Linux system... Android is more like a Linux host for a Java-based system.

About what Linus said, really, I think that you gave exactly the reaction that he mentioned. Those who get offended deserve to be offended or something like that. You just proved his point.
 
Some of you have no clue about the server market. Graphics and graphics drivers are not install, nor used in most servers today. Some outliers in the HPC market using the graphic cards to process non-graphic workloads, but these are few and far between vs the masses running the internet, and most company and gov't intranets, etc. The majority of Linux graphic users are non-server type desktop in some form or another as in laptop, etc.
 
[citation][nom]mitch074[/nom]@spookyman: you do know that since Oracle bought Sun, they've pushed to replace said Solaris installs with their own Red Hat clone called Oracle Unbreakable Linux, right? ...[/citation]

mitch074, dude, you need to get your facts from a better source cause Oracle's been making it very clear that they have two operating systems, Solaris and Oracle Enterprise Linux AKA: OEL. You didn't even get the name of their Linux correct. "Oracle Unbreakable Linux" is a support contract to support either OEL and/or RedHat. The correct name is Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) and you may boot OEL from either the RedHat compatible mode kernel or the "Oracle Unbreakable Kernel."

Oracle has large investments in both OEL and Solaris and a long roadmap for BOTH!! Each have their place with lots of overlap. They are even putting Solaris features in OEL and OEL features in Solaris. We have been told that KSplice for example will be in both.
 
[citation][nom]ItsObvious[/nom]I`ve had nothing but bad experiances with nVidia PC cards.The same goes for many of the people I know.I just sent a GTX 460 back as it would not work with an AMD 4x.All the experiences I hear are that ATI has never been a problem.All of my old ATI cards still work, NONE of the nVidia`s still work.[/citation]

I've had problem cards and problem-free cards from both companies over the years. My experience is that sometimes one or both companies does good and sometimes, one or both companies screws something up.
 
[citation][nom]hawkwindeb[/nom][...]They are even putting Solaris features in OEL and OEL features in Solaris. We have been told that KSplice for example will be in both.[/citation]

Pulling the plug on OpenSolaris and now porting features from Solaris to Linux doesn't seem very "long raodmap"-like to me - it's closer to "ripping out what's good from Solaris to migrate to a single OS that we're not maintaining ourselves otherwise".
As for my mixup with the support plan compared with the actual distribution (which is a compile from source from Red Hat's own packages), I'm extremely sorry about that.

But then I wonder why, if you're that hung on names, you're calling it 'their Linux', since the proper terminology actually is 'their own GNU/Linux distribution'.

Pot, kettle.
 
@neverknowjustguess: then stay away from Android smartphones, Google, DVD/Blu-Ray players, set-top boxes, many TV sets, most websites, and don't forget to maintain your own list of domain names.
You must also stay away from Apple products, whose founder declared thermonuclear war on Android - he must have been a terrorist, or Microsoft, whose CEO showed signs of mental instability...
 
“And that is really sad because Nvidia tries to sell chips - a LOT of chips - into the Android market. And Nvidia has been the single worst company we have ever dealt with. So, Nvidia, fuck you!”

Yeah, well, apparently he has never dealt with ATI.
 
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