Nvidia Issues Diplomatic Response to Linus Torvalds' F-Bomb

[blazorthon]

Yeah, well, I guess you missed the post about how the latest drivers don't support the HD 3200 "or any HD card older then a 5000 series"... And the latest drivers are required if you want to use the latest xorg stuff in Linux. Funny example, because the HD 3200 was on new laptops as late as 2011. So, for someone trying to use the latest version of Fedora, you might see two different scenarios...

ATI/AMD user: "Hmm... When I try to install older drivers, it bricks the OS..." 2 hours and some forum searching later.. "I need the latest drivers to get 3d support in xorg, lets install them... WTF, it bricked my OS again?!" 2 hours and some forum searching later... "CRAP the latest drivers don't support my card at all!" *throws card out the window, user is very angry*

Nvidia user: "Wow, that was easy..." *user is very happy*

Hence the reason that many versions of many Linux distros can stick with a version of x.org for a while. Besides, even on the six month release schedules that some distros get, do you really think that there won't be updates to the open source AMD drivers when needed for x.org compatibiltiy in the new releases of each distro? Furthermore, AMD isn't completely abandoning the older cards, AMD is simply slowing down their driver release schedules

Beyond all of that, do you really think that if none of this was already true, nothing else would be doable? If necessary, x.org could be made to be compatible with AMD's current legacy drivers for as long as reasonable or distros could slow down their adoption of new x.org versions. Heck, devs for several distros have been saying for quite a while that they were planning on keeping slower x.org update schedules specifically for common driver incompatibilities. It's not like we always need to have the very latest x.org version. I'm not mocking you or anything like that, I'm just saying that I think that you're over-exaggerating the impact of AMD's restructured driver release scheduling.

 

[blazorthon]

Could you elaborate more on that issue with incompatible languages?

For example, Windows 7 prefers DX9.0C or something like that compatible GPUs or newer for things such as Aero. Try using an older GPU and you're out of luck.

 

[behelit123]

Hence the reason that many versions of many Linux distros can stick with a version of x.org for a while. Besides, even on the six month release schedules that some distros get, do you really think that there won't be updates to the open source AMD drivers when needed for x.org compatibiltiy in the new releases of each distro? Furthermore, AMD isn't completely abandoning the older cards, AMD is simply slowing down their driver release schedules

Beyond all of that, do you really think that if none of this was already true, nothing else would be doable? If necessary, x.org could be made to be compatible with AMD's current legacy drivers for as long as reasonable or distros could slow down their adoption of new x.org versions. Heck, devs for several distros have been saying for quite a while that they were planning on keeping slower x.org update schedules specifically for common driver incompatibilities. It's not like we always need to have the very latest x.org version. I'm not mocking you or anything like that, I'm just saying that I think that you're over-exaggerating the impact of AMD's restructured driver release scheduling.

First off, I don't think anything, I observe. It just makes you sound like a ATI fan boy when you repeat the phrase "Do you really think?".

Second, my dislike of ATI's... and now, AMD's driver support comes from years of experience. I've had problems with their cards, day one, starting with the R100. Nvidia? Not so much. They have problems, yes, but... I've never had their drivers brick a OS. I've never had my card work perfectly one driver version then be completely dropped in the next release. And I've never encountered a situation where I absolutely could not get a Nvidia card working due to poor driver support.

Feel free to continue, but it still isn't going to change the fact that historically and to this day... Nvidia has great driver support in Linux, ATI/AMD does not.

Edit: I had to revisit this, because I kind of came off like a ATI/AMD hater. This is not true, their hardware is pretty solid. When working, I've had some of the best gaming experiences ever on Radeon cards. I've owned many of both the AGP and the PCI-E variety. One of my favorite consoles, the Wii, is powered by Radeon tech. Apple is a heavy adopter of Radeon products, and I love Apple. But if I had to pick a card for Linux use? One where I didn't have to worry about doing extensive research just to see if it will work or not? I would pick Nvidia every time, without question, and have a smile on my face while I'm doing it.

 

[blazorthon]

First off, I don't think anything, I observe. It just makes you sound like a ATI fan boy when you repeat the phrase "Do you really think?".

Second, my dislike of ATI's... and now, AMD's driver support comes from years of experience. I've had problems with their cards, day one, starting with the R100. Nvidia? Not so much. They have problems, yes, but... I've never had their drivers brick a OS. I've never had my card work perfectly one driver version then be completely dropped in the next release. And I've never encountered a situation where I absolutely could not get a Nvidia card working due to poor driver support.

Feel free to continue, but it still isn't going to change the fact that historically and to this day... Nvidia has great driver support in Linux, ATI/AMD does not.

Edit: I had to revisit this, because I kind of came off like a ATI/AMD hater. This is not true, their hardware is pretty solid. When working, I've had some of the best gaming experiences ever on Radeon cards. I've owned many of both the AGP and the PCI-E variety. One of my favorite consoles, the Wii, is powered by Radeon tech. Apple is a heavy adopter of Radeon products, and I love Apple. But if I had to pick a card for Linux use? One where I didn't have to worry about doing extensive research just to see if it will work or not? I would pick Nvidia every time, without question, and have a smile on my face while I'm doing it.

Current AMD Linux drivers are generally superior to current Nvidia Linux drivers and don't forget Nvidia's older 196.75 or such driver that didn't brick OSes, but it killed the card by causing it to overheat. AMD's never did that one. Ati had poor Linux driver support and oftentimes poor driver support period, but AMD's drivers slowly improved until now where even on the desktop front, they've been better than Nvidia's for a short few weeks. Nvidia has had the stuttering problem, throttling problem, and more whereas with Catalyst 12.6 and 12.7, AMD has not had any problems at all for me nor anyone else whom I know with Radeon 7000 cards. Nvidia's recent driver release supposedly fixes these problems and I have no doubt that it does, but they went unfixed for several weeks and during this time frame, AMD had the advantage in drivers, albeit only a small advantage.

If what I'm telling you makes me look like a fanboy to you, then there's a problem and it's not at my end. I've had numerous Nvidia cards, not just Ati/AMD cards. For example, the card that I had right before my AMD Radeon 7850 was a GTX 560 TI. Up until Catalyst 12.6, the Nvidia drivers had an advantage, although it was a noticeably dwindling advantage with every few Catalyst releases.

 

[behelit123]

Current AMD Linux drivers are generally superior to current Nvidia Linux drivers and don't forget Nvidia's older 196.75 or such driver that didn't brick OSes, but it killed the card by causing it to overheat. AMD's never did that one. Ati had poor Linux driver support and oftentimes poor driver support period, but AMD's drivers slowly improved until now where even on the desktop front, they've been better than Nvidia's for a short few weeks. Nvidia has had the stuttering problem, throttling problem, and more whereas with Catalyst 12.6 and 12.7, AMD has not had any problems at all for me nor anyone else whom I know with Radeon 7000 cards. Nvidia's recent driver release supposedly fixes these problems and I have no doubt that it does, but they went unfixed for several weeks and during this time frame, AMD had the advantage in drivers, albeit only a small advantage.

If what I'm telling you makes me look like a fanboy to you, then there's a problem and it's not at my end. I've had numerous Nvidia cards, not just Ati/AMD cards. For example, the card that I had right before my AMD Radeon 7850 was a GTX 560 TI. Up until Catalyst 12.6, the Nvidia drivers had an advantage, although it was a noticeably dwindling advantage with every few Catalyst releases.

OK, maybe I was being a bit unreasonable. But there is a bit of a history here. I fried two Radeon 9800 pros playing Final Fantasy XI and Doom 3, so the Radeon line is not without it's fair share of overheating problems. Any time I tried to run 3d modeling software (Maya, 3DSM, etc) on AGP era Radeon cards, it would invariably either crash instantly or overheat and crash after about 15 minutes. I had less issues with my 3Dfx Voodoo cards... But they went out of business and was forced to adopt a new company. I used Radeon cards for about 5 years and I ran into a inordinately large amount of issues. Then I got a Geforce 6600 GT. All of a sudden my 3d modeling software worked flawlessly, all my games worked without having to search for the right driver, overheating problems = gone, frame rates were smoother, and !! OMG I could us 3d in Linux for the first time ever! With such a dramatic difference in performance, reliability, driver support, and game compatibility; I didn't think twice about getting another Geforce card... And then another... And then another. With each purchase, Nvidia never gave me the slightest reason to doubt them. My 3d modeling software works great, games run perfect, and driver support has always been top notch. I've made a few attempts to switch back to Radeon since then, only to be pissed off and immediately return to Geforce. But that's ancient history now, Radeon is now under AMD's control. It's very possible that they are resolving their issues and shaping up into a decent GPU maker. But from my perspective, it's like I've been driving a Audi or BMW for years now, and you are asking me to consider a Kia or Hyundai. Yeah, those Korean cars are nice and all... But I think I'll stick to my German engineering.

Edit: Also, the fact that the Radeon show is now run by AMD does not instill much confidence. I'm sure anyone who owned a Compaq before HP bought them just LOVED what that did for their driver support.

I'm not mocking you or anything like that, I'm just saying that I think that you're over-exaggerating the impact of AMD's restructured driver release scheduling.

Edit: Oh, and it just dawned on me that you tried to defend AMD driver support by sighting the open source drivers. News flash, the open source AMD drivers are HORRIBLE when it comes to 3D support. And it has nothing to do with their restructured release scheduling. The Gnome 3 desktop has been available since April 2011, well over a year. Lots of distros use it, many of them by default. Just try getting 3D accelleration working with any Radeon card older then the HD 5000 series in Gnome 3, I dare you.

 

[spartanmk2]

That picture reminds me of that little kid flipping off someone lolol..where is it..

oh here!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/-hold-on-/4417696996/

 

[Guest]

Linux doesn't make any money... And desktop Linux share is low (about 0.5%) so why should NVIDIA care about Linux.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]connie34534[/nom]Linux doesn't make any money... And desktop Linux share is low (about 0.5%) so why should NVIDIA care about Linux.[/citation]

It's far higher than you seem to think that it is.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]behelit123[/nom]Edit: Also, the fact that the Radeon show is now run by AMD does not instill much confidence. I'm sure anyone who owned a Compaq before HP bought them just LOVED what that did for their driver support.Edit: Oh, and it just dawned on me that you tried to defend AMD driver support by sighting the open source drivers. News flash, the open source AMD drivers are HORRIBLE when it comes to 3D support. And it has nothing to do with their restructured release scheduling. The Gnome 3 desktop has been available since April 2011, well over a year. Lots of distros use it, many of them by default. Just try getting 3D accelleration working with any Radeon card older then the HD 5000 series in Gnome 3, I dare you.[/citation]

Considering that AMD has pretty much solved the driver woes of Ati, it was obviously a good move by AMD. Furthermore, the open source drivers are better than you give them credit for. They improve rapidly, so unless you really keep up with them, you could completely lose touch with their quality between releases. Besides, that's not even what I was referring to with what I said that you quoted at the bottom. The new schedule only came out a few weeks or so ago, so yeah, of course it might not have fixed a problem that started well before it came into effect.

You forget that any card older than the Radeon 5000 series is not DX11-compatible with the associated level of GPGPU acceleration compatibility, so it doesn't have full support for GPGPU acceleration, especially 3D acceleration. AMD was on damage control and was repetitively improving everything from where Ati left it. Radeon 4000 and 5000 were fairly significant changes from previous generations (including 5000 versus 4000) and were the first examples of Ati/AMD graphics being highly competitive with Nvidia in a while, especially when it was Radeon 5000 versus GTX 200 for those ~6 months instead of GTX 400.

 

[army_ant7]

[citation][nom]behelit123[/nom]This is what pisses me off about AMD:http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticl [...] 6beta.aspx
Scroll down to the bottom and look at the "Hardware:" section. That's right, they dropped support for anything older then the HD 5000 series. That means anyone trying to use the latest drivers with a card made before 2009 is just out of luck. Nvidia, on the other hand, openly supports cards made over a decade ago. Forgive me, but I don't really see that as much of an improvement on AMD's part. More like... "Lets just make drivers as long as they are profitable, screw anyone with legacy hardware."[/citation]
I was just checking the hotfixes page of AMD like the geek I am, and found this. Then I just suddenly remembered this discussion. I don't mean to offend, but they might not be totally out of luck like you said, though cards older than HD 2000 don't seem to be supported, but it' still some effort that deserves merit nevertheless. http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalyst126legacyproducts.aspx

 

[cybersans]

they(linus, linux fanboys) should stick with command-line interface (CLI) so that they would not even bother about graphic driver. last time i heard linux fanboys around the world says linux is different than windows. when they decide to put GUI inside linux, then what is the different with the windows? and yelling about graphic driver?

shame on you, linux!

 

[army_ant7]

[citation][nom]cybersans[/nom]they(linus, linux fanboys) should stick with command-line interface (CLI) so that they would not even bother about graphic driver. last time i heard linux fanboys around the world says linux is different than windows. when they decide to put GUI inside linux, then what is the different with the windows? and yelling about graphic driver?shame on you, linux![/citation]
I'm sorry, but I have to say what you've just said was ignorant and offensive. Are Windows, (Mac)OSX, iOS, Android, etc. different? They all have GUI's the last I heard.
Don't tell someone that they should do away with something so that they won't have any problems with a prerequisite (graphical drivers in this case). I mean, what you're saying is like telling someone to not use electricity if they complain about (unreasonably) high electricity rates.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]cybersans[/nom]they(linus, linux fanboys) should stick with command-line interface (CLI) so that they would not even bother about graphic driver. last time i heard linux fanboys around the world says linux is different than windows. when they decide to put GUI inside linux, then what is the different with the windows? and yelling about graphic driver?shame on you, linux![/citation]

I didn't see Linux users complaining about how much Windows users whined about the Radeon 7000 drivers when they were crap, so don't expect any sympathy for your complaints when the tables turn around.

 

[bustapr]

[citation][nom]whooleo[/nom]I'm pretty sure nVIDIA has had much better driver support than other companies *COUGH* AMD*COUGH* so Linus needs to stop b****ing because nVIDIA drivers work pretty good under linux open source or not. This guy is just a clown I tells ya![/citation]
the linux community can easily fix many of the driver issues from AMD cards. And AMD has some sort of linux updates also. They dont usually complain about AMD. Nvidia however, doesnt allow for community support, so the community has to wait til nvidia gets it out their ass to update drivers.

 

[rooket]

Although I think it would have been more proper for this guy to not flip off the camera or cuss, I kinda wish he would have (for anything it is nothing against Nvidia here) used the full bird. Whenever someone in the US doesn't, it makes them look like some sort of a poser. In this case, the use of only the middle finger and bobbing it up and down looked to me as dorky. Linus needs to man up a little bit before making a display imho.

 

[darkavenger123]

Nvidia is doing the right thing. The last thing you want are buggy drivers from an open source community which will fracture the drivers platform.....at least NVIDIA takes on the responsibility of making sure their drivers works for their customers instead of a bunch of geeks with no responsibilities to shoulder should the driver breaks.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]darkavenger123[/nom]Nvidia is doing the right thing. The last thing you want are buggy drivers from an open source community which will fracture the drivers platform.....at least NVIDIA takes on the responsibility of making sure their drivers works for their customers instead of a bunch of geeks with no responsibilities to shoulder should the driver breaks.[/citation]

Nvidia doesn't take much responsibility in that and the open source AMD drivers are quite the success, so I fail to see your side in this.

 

[bryonhowley]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]AMD's Linux drivers are better than Nvidia's drivers right now. Even before Catalyst 12.7, the 7970 beat the 680 in most Linux workable games such as World of Warcraft and others despite some of these games generally favoring Nvidia on the Windows platforms.[/citation]
Absolutely not Nvidia's Linux drivers are much better than AMD's and have always been. I use AMD cards only for Windows as there hardware and drivers are just better but for Linux it has to be Nvidia as there drivers are miles ahead of AMD's Linux drivers and that is just the way it is. Nvidia has stated many times over the years why there drivers are not completely open source and they have very good reasons for doing so.

That is the biggest problem with most Linux die hards though they have to have every thing open source and free what a crock of shit. That way of thinking is the main reason most dev's do not mess with Linux because they know they would not make any money from most Linux users as they do not buy software they want it all for free!

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]bryonhowley[/nom]Absolutely not Nvidia's Linux drivers are much better than AMD's and have always been. I use AMD cards only for Windows as there hardware and drivers are just better but for Linux it has to be Nvidia as there drivers are miles ahead of AMD's Linux drivers and that is just the way it is. Nvidia has stated many times over the years why there drivers are not completely open source and they have very good reasons for doing so. That is the biggest problem with most Linux die hards though they have to have every thing open source and free what a crock of shit. That way of thinking is the main reason most dev's do not mess with Linux because they know they would not make any money from most Linux users as they do not buy software they want it all for free![/citation]

If you think that the Linux community should have to pay for drivers, well, I have to disagree. Charging for drivers to use hardware that at least someone had to pay for (unless they stole it, but that's unlikely) would be ridiculous, to say the least. Open Source means that the community can fix problems that Nvidia doesn't fix (or at least doesn't fix quickly enough), so it can be important. Furthermore, the open source AMD drivers have been constantly improving since they came out and are very good nowadays.

If Linux users can get software for free because many of them are developing it, then what's wrong with that? They were smart enough to jump through their own hoops rather than those of the companies and it works for them. If I decided to make my own food out of crops and animals that I raised myself on a small farm and no longer had to pay for food, does that make me a bad person? Sure, some Linux users are complete assholes. The same is true for pretty much any group of people and Windows users are not an exception.

 

[DAK_59]

I fail to see the problem. If you don't like what Nvidia is doing, stop buying their products. Nvidia will either provide the documentation or become irrelevant in the Linux community. Nvidia exists to make a profit. If you stop buying their products, that can't happen.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]DAK_59[/nom]I fail to see the problem. If you don't like what Nvidia is doing, stop buying their products. Nvidia will either provide the documentation or become irrelevant in the Linux community. Nvidia exists to make a profit. If you stop buying their products, that can't happen.[/citation]

The Linux community doesn't have such power over Nvidia. Furthermore, around half of the world's consumer graphics cards are Nvidia, so of course Linux devs don't have to be happy about Nvidia not being cooperative.

 

[clonazepam]

omg i read all these comments and i think my brain is swollen

 

[Ahumado]

linus is a putz nvidia doesn't owe him a thing or you for that matter

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Ahumado[/nom]linus is a putz nvidia doesn't owe him a thing or you for that matter[/citation]

That's debatable. The modern internet and many businesses such as Nvidia rely on Linux in various ways and Linux wouldn't have come about if not for Linus Torvalds.

 

[valentyn0]

[citation][nom]Andy Chow[/nom]No, they don't. It's only 24 bit color. 32 bit color is a marketing term.[/citation]
Actually no, it's interpolated from 24 to 32b.

Workstation/Mainframe cards have full 32b color.