NVIDIA PR Responds To Torvalds' Harsh Words

[vertexSymphony]

well, it's gets better or worse: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...-and-nres.aspx

A rumor appeared [...] Thus, if the Beijing rumor turns out to be true

Well, for some reason I'm not buying this ... only time will confirm or not this "rumor"

[V!NCENT]

Look, games are not important anymore. It's starting to become a niche market. You're probably thinking that I'm pulling that out of my ass, which is a logical assumption, but just look at the facts:
-Current gen console sales are nowhere near what they used to be with the previous generation consoles (like the Playstation 2), and;
-PC game sales are nowhere near consoles, according to the enterprise.
Conclusion: game sales are declining at an extreme speed. The prices go up, which is how the industry grows in worth in terms of money, which is the reason prices are still climbing, resulting in even more piracy. It's a downwards spiral.

Many people are converting to the Mac, which isn't realy the ultimate gaming platform, showing not a lot of people care for games. The biggest sales are in the cheap ass PC sector, which are not suitable for gaming. The PC graphics industry focusses on gimmick stuff like 3D, because that's the only way for PC gaming to have an advantage above console port games (make them somehow nicer), and 3D panels and glasses almost do not sell. Look at the figures for that.

So are superb graphics capabilities the key for market succes? Not realy and only slightly and vastly declining. Therefore drivers that are stable, energy efficient and somewhat capable of 3D desktop acceleration (which are the open source ones allmost, in terms of energy), are more important. Now look at the China example and conclude what is more profitable. Aren't IGP's pwning because of that now?

Rethink the market. IT companies are reinventing themselves constantly and those who don't addapt; DIE. AMD is addapting and will be succesfull. Intel is already adapting where needed, but on the PC they are fit enough for survival already. nVidia is being left to die if they don't reinvent quickly. If they realise what they have to do and put much more effort into documentation, DRM escaping and open development than AMD then you can bet your ass I will go nVidia.

You see; I'm NOT a fanboy. I'm only a giant fanboy of AMD _right now_ because they're better. If nVidia beats AMD at open source and free software I will instantly become a nVidia fanboy and vice-versa.

[hal2k1]

Open source community is not fast enough to keep up with the changes that need to be done. For gamers sake like you, NOW. For example the open source drivers for AMD Radeon are still incomplete after the celebration of the documentation. The features of Radeon cards from open source drivers should already be implemented, but they are not.

Au contraire, here is the feature matrix for the open source radeon driver:

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

Green means "done".

Yellow "WIP" means work-in-progress. Most of the time this means new work is required as such a feature does not exist anywhere (e.g. Video Decode {XvMC/VDPAU/VA-API} on the 3D engine, this doesn't exist anywhere, not even on Windows).

Red "TODO" means no documentation has been provided for that feature (e.g. Video Decode {XvMC/VDPAU/VA-API} on UVD hardware).

There is very little missing from this feature matrix because of the reason you imagined, to whit: "open source community is not fast enough to keep up with the changes that need to be done". This is for the most part simply untrue, that is NOT the reason why missing features are missing.

[hal2k1]

You are not seriously suggesting that if NVIDIA offered specs and documentation that the open source community could provide a better-performing driver than the one released by NVIDIA?

If NVIDIA offered specs and documentation then the open source community could indeed provide a better-working-with Linux driver than the one released by NVIDIA.

Far better working.

[johnc]

Look, games are not important anymore. It's starting to become a niche market.

...

Aren't IGP's pwning because of that now?

...

Rethink the market. IT companies are reinventing themselves constantly and those who don't addapt; DIE. AMD is addapting and will be succesfull. Intel is already adapting where needed, but on the PC they are fit enough for survival already. nVidia is being left to die if they don't reinvent quickly. If they realise what they have to do and put much more effort into documentation, DRM escaping and open development than AMD then you can bet your ass I will go nVidia.

I think NVIDIA has picked up on these market trends and is trying to diversify its way out of the gaming niche. They wanted to go the x86 IGP route but Intel said no... so they're looking at using the ARM architecture instead (Project Denver). If they can pull that off they'll be in a good position. They've focused heavily on the mobile space (and have established themselves as a big player in that market). GPGPU computing appears to be an important part of their strategy and it looks like they're going to dabble in cloud gaming as well (a bit risky).

The interesting thing is that Linux will probably be the cornerstone of all of those avenues.

[scjet]

Shame on you Nvidia

I think you can buy laptop with Nvidia graphic card (without Optimus):

http://zareason.com/shop/Laptops/

http://linuxpreloaded.com/

You "think" ??? -go think with your own $1799.00 bub. Seriously, unless its a couple years old, OR, it's the newer i think? -lol Nvidia GPU/AMD CPU Laptops?, then nope.
So, sadly enough, we're all stuck with an utterly USELESS "new" Optimus Laptop,..., for Linux.
Even "Clevo",... and/or any of the very few remaining others are building them all "with" Optimus now. - NO choice, 'cause it's hardwired, no thanks to Intel/Nvidia/Microsoft.

So ya, I aggree with Linus: "Nvidia, fuck-you !"

[V!NCENT]

I think NVIDIA has picked up on these market trends and is trying to diversify its way out of the gaming niche. They wanted to go the x86 IGP route but Intel said no... so they're looking at using the ARM architecture instead (Project Denver). If they can pull that off they'll be in a good position. They've focused heavily on the mobile space (and have established themselves as a big player in that market). GPGPU computing appears to be an important part of their strategy and it looks like they're going to dabble in cloud gaming as well (a bit risky).

The interesting thing is that Linux will probably be the cornerstone of all of those avenues.

By looking into that, I can conclude that nVidia indeed jumped to the conclusion way earlier than I did (and appearantly my subconcious knew that too, giving me the idea that I came up with it myself, oops ).

But that better be fully open documentation, because otherwise that succes will be shortlived when consumers find out that buying nVidia means upgrading whenever nVidia thinks it's time to upgrade while the consumer might not want that yet. That would result in "never buying nVidia again!". Or at least having open source support ready at blob support discontinuation of the product.

[kotakotakota]

You "think" ??? -go think with your own $1799.00 bub. Seriously, unless its a couple years old, OR, it's the newer i think? -lol Nvidia GPU/AMD CPU Laptops?, then nope.
So, sadly enough, we're all stuck with an utterly USELESS "new" Optimus Laptop,..., for Linux.
Even "Clevo",... and/or any of the very few remaining others are building them all "with" Optimus now. - NO choice, 'cause it's hardwired, no thanks to Intel/Nvidia/Microsoft.

So ya, I aggree with Linus: "Nvidia, fuck-you !"

Just a note, some BIOS do let you choose to disable Optimus and manually specify which GPU you want to use. I did that on my Thinkpad and works great.

[scjet]

Just a note, some BIOS do let you choose to disable Optimus and manually specify which GPU you want to use. I did that on my Thinkpad and works great.

Ya?, well then post the make and model, how old is it ?.... please.
Because ALL "newer", and future laptops with nvidia have Optimus (hard-wried), which is "useless" for Linux right now.

[kotakotakota]

Ya?, well then post the make and model, how old is it ?.... please.
Because ALL "newer", and future laptops with nvidia have Optimus (hard-wried), which is "useless" for Linux right now.

Lenovo Thinkpad T420. It's about a year old I think.