Linus Torvalds Calls NVIDIA The Worst Company Ever

[Wilfred]

It amazes me that Windows and OS X are able to make these proprietary drivers work without a hitch.

The way people talk here, it's simply an impossibly horrible way of doing things.

Haha, the nvidia driver was also the main cause of crashes of ms windows systems a few years ago. Nowadays 64 bit ms windows 7 only loads drivers signed by microsoft. And Microsoft tests the hell out of those drivers which takes quite some time. Or I.O.W. Microsoft and Nvidia spend an enormous amount of money, time and people to make it so. I'm guessing that the nouveau developers are way way more efficient. Don't know about Apple, but I'm guessing the same.

[edmon]

For their IP yes, for the IP that they license they do not.

Hm, did they still pays to 3dfx ?? ))))

[Paradox Ethereal]

What he calls organic, is ofcourse what the religious calls metaphysical. Let natural roles form around a project. Which is also religiously surrender to natural behaviour and Gods will.

Praised Be God.
Peace Be With You.

[AnonymousCoward]

Can anyone comment about how big/invasive the Nvidia graphics driver is to the rest of the stack? Last time I used an Nvidia card (about 4 years ago) the Nvidia blob replaced a large amount of Mesa/X and the rest of the system, which is why eg. RandR support took so long to be implemented.

If it's still being maintained that way then Nvidia definitely is being hostile to Linux development, it's taking the "we can't support a tainted kernel" argument and extending it to say "you're not actually running Linux any more once you install the Nvidia blob" - all for a graphics/parallel compute device

well nvidia blob replace libGL.so from mesa and few other files. it makes backup thouth. but you cant update mesa/kernel otherwise you end up with broken driver. catalyst have IMHO better integration as it let you build deb/rpm package and doesn't overwrite any files. it keeps own libGL.so in /usr/lib/fglrx and point at it with entry in /etc/ld.conf.d

[TobiSGD]

Haha, the nvidia driver was also the main cause of crashes of ms windows systems a few years ago. Nowadays 64 bit ms windows 7 only loads drivers signed by microsoft. And Microsoft tests the hell out of those drivers which takes quite some time. Or I.O.W. Microsoft and Nvidia spend an enormous amount of money, time and people to make it so. I'm guessing that the nouveau developers are way way more efficient. Don't know about Apple, but I'm guessing the same.

Every driver from AMD/Nvidia for Windows is signed. Even the betas. The signing has nothing to do with stability, it is a security function.

[uid313]

Every driver from AMD/Nvidia for Windows is signed. Even the betas. The signing has nothing to do with stability, it is a security function.

But I think device drivers go through WHQL Testing (Windows Hardware Quality Labs).

Also, Windows Vista introduced Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) which I think made device drivers more stable or something.

[DeepDayze]

I remember in the early days of Linux that many hardware manufacturers were not helpful and had refused to provide documentation for their hardware. Diamond and Neomagic come to mind as those examples, but as time went on these companies eventually did provide at least some documentation for their graphics hardware and in the end Linux users bought such hardware..thus those companies had sales to some extent.

I'm sure at some point, with the right persuasion and pressure nVidia could provide some documentation where they legally can in the same vein as what AMD did to vet their code and sanitize it to be *legally* releasable. Devs can then write code to replace any missing pieces that could not be released.

Linus's bashing of nVidia (directly or indirectly) might not even help the cause at all in my opinion.

[patrik]

With all religious views aside, there is a big benefit for Nvidia to release the specs and an open driver. The next innovative consumer product that doesn't try to mimic a desktop computer will run Linux. And the hardware that requires the least amount of hassle and gives the most flexibility will be the target for that device. Lets take augmented reality glasses as an example. You have to optimize the software stack on those devices because you need performance while still having to fit everything in a very tiny space. Relying on Nvidia writing the drivers for your device is not an option. Perhaps Google can get a company like Nvidia to write custom some custom code, but for a small start-up company it's just not possible.

By selling closed technology, Nvidia (or any other GPU manufacturer) eliminates the possibility of being part of the next big thing. I'd say it's worth the trouble of sorting out any IP issues for the benefit of letting people use your products to innovate. Linux is the playing ground and Nvidia refuses to play with the other kids. Basically a poor business decision that will cost them real money. The wise thing to do would be to open up before someone else does it and grabs the market completely.

[johnc]

So now the LinuxTards are bringing down the nvnews.net site because the admin asked that the topic not be discussed on his forum? The irony is so rich... the Linux community demands "freedom" but at the same time, if a person exercises his freedom in a manner deemed heretical by the Church of FOSS then it's time to mount a crusade.

Seriously... is closed-source and proprietary software forbidden on this platform and if not, where is the tolerance? If people don't like a piece of software, then they should exercise their freedom to avoid it. But don't try to force your decision on the rest of us.

[entropy]

Seriously... is closed-source and proprietary software forbidden on this platform and if not, where is the tolerance?
If people don't like a piece of software, then they should exercise their freedom to avoid it. But don't try to force your decision on the rest of us.

The question ist too general IMHO.
Of course, using closed-source software is perfectly fine with Linux when we talk about user-space software (not using GPL stuff).
It's not that easy to tell in case of kernel-space drivers. AFAIK it's still not clear what the legal situation really is.
That thin layer of glue code might just don't work as an excuse. So all those blobs potentially violate the kernel licence.
It doesn't matter if it has been tolerated until now or that there has not been any court case so far concerning this issue.

The thing is, the Linux idea is based on some rules the developers agree on - for simplicity lets say it's what the GPL contains.
How about reversing your statement and say "If a user doesn't agree with that idea, he should user another OS".
Or use an OS with a BSD licence or Windows, whatever. There are plenty alternatives.