News Torvalds slams Nvidia's Linux support

Hopefully this will nudge Nvidia into finally giving support for the battery saving feature

 

A lot of reactions so far have really surprised me. So little Linux love on a PC enthusiast forum? Power saving features are quite important as laptops are a [relatively] common system to install Linux on, its lower demands provide a smoother experience on mobile hardware and saves battery life. Take away other battery saving features and you ruin that advantage.

At first glance the lack of would be understandable, just as with the recent MS vs. AMD article if you want someone to spend money on your features then you need to either given incentive or use some muscle. But given that Nvidia has voluntarily joined the Linux Foundation I can see where Torvalds is coming from.

 

Well, looks like Linus got the attention he was seeking...

The irony is, nVidia's drivers for Linux seem to be more stable than the ones for Windows.

 

I'm trying to watch the whole video and I'm losing the will to live with this guy's long *** introduction.

 

For everyone saying Linux is ignored b/c it's a small demographic; do you know WHY it's a small demographic? drivers have always been one of Linux's weak points, and this continued lack of support from major players is one of the only real reasons for enthusiasts like us not to use Linux.

A manufacturer like Nvidia deciding not to give full support to Linux is a bit like a university offering 90% of the classes needed for a given major. So close at yet so far.

P.S. Linux is NOT that small of a demographic, according to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp Linux accounts for 5% of installed operating systems. That's more than windows vista and about 60% as much as mac. It's not huge, but 5% of all the worlds computers is not insignificant.

 

Draw attention to himself when he is doing a question and answer session? He is already the focal point so he doesn't draw more attention to himself. He is a blunt person and says what he thinks. This was merely a reaction to the frustration of Nvidia taking without giving, they're happy to try and take over the smartphone and tablet market with Tegra with Android (Linux) but they aren't willing to give full support of their laptop/desktop hardware on Linux.

 

Linus is so awesome, this will undermine the reputation of nVidia and cost them big time, because while linux users are only 3% of PC users, they are the TOP 3% in terms of skill, programming and know how.

Expect nVidia to fix this in 2012!

 

They should be able to sort their own drivers out then...

 

So Linux users are more knowledgable than Windows or Mac people? I'm fairly certain that not all Linux users know more than basic stuff about computers.

Also, even if you correct, why would nvidia feel threatened by some skilled, knowledgable people?

 

Headache.

I think the real question is why WOULD a graphics card manufacturer want to be more than a little invested in an operating system that, and I can't stress this part enough, has little to no available application.

You know, like namely games and stuff. Why should every company just open their doors to free looky lookys into their drivers and software? They're an actual company after all. Try using AMD drivers on Linux anyway, they're close to awful. So opening your doors to spare time hermits who want to improve things, doesn't always give results apparently.

 

True...but not all qualified it professionals seem to know anything about PCs or Windows, let alone linux. Also, in pure percentage terms, a higher aMount of linux users are probably competent compared to windows or Mac users. It's in the nature of running the system.

 

Linux isn't the barely-known/used platform devoid of merit you seem to think it is.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of all servers run on Linux, many supercomputers and clusters rely on a customized Linux kernel, and about 5% of all computers on the net use it (for reference, Mac OS accounts for 9%). And the entire CSCI department at my college run's off of it, which is rather common practice according to my friends at other schools.

There are many applications for Linux that benefit from advanced driver features, especially the power saving capabilities of the feature at issue here: many netbooks and laptops use Linux to cut costs, and supporting this feature under Linux would help extend battery life on units packing discrete GPUs.

 

After wondering the same thing the conclusion I was reached was: they should have figured that out before joining the Linux Foundation. Nvidia is paying to be a member and part of the terms of membership is supporting Linux in a way applicable to the company's abilities, graphics hardware and software in the case of Nividia.

 

In every house of every man
in every company's crucial gear
in every internet voice, in every ban
yet ignorance is what we hear.

 

Nice

 

Ha great banter. Its true tho a fortune is being made of the back of the tegra chips which are running android. They should be putting more back in because of this. Both AMD and NVIDIA are in linux foundation but does that really mean that much...?

I wish they would put much more effort into the drivers. But with the announcement of unity engine 4 on Linux hopefully it might give them the boot up the arse they need!

Bill

 

Majority of servers do not run on Linux, a certain percentage do. Don't exaggerate! Not that it has anything to do with a GPU manufacturer handing out it's work to bedroom programmers.

I know the Linux community isn't as small as I may be making out, and appreciate some of the benifits of an open source platform regardless of whether or not they interest me, but the point still stands. Say if you designed something from the ground up to sell on, and someone came up to you and said; "Look mate, any chance we can have a quick look at your blue prints? Really want to put this to use on this little project I've been working on in my spare time." You'd be dubious at least if not meet it with a few swift words. I personally think theres a lot more to this than meets the eye, and people shouldn't be so quick to judge the larger corporation for not wanting to give in to what is a huge favour essentially

 

Yet they are happy to make big bucks off said "bedroom project"...? And the majority do servers do run Linux. Major corps tend to use Windows pretty much for exchange, other than high level businesses most use some form of Linux.

And last time I checked Red Hat & Ubuntu were making a fair bit cash off "little projects".

Bill

 

Ok, I really hope you're trolling, but here goes anyway... A quick Google search reveals some stats.

First of all, W3Tech figures (for web servers) as of today:

Unix (which includes Linux and other variants): 63.7%
Windows: 36.3%

(Sauce: http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/operating_system/all)

Now a quick look at supercomputers, as measured by the TOP500 project (see here for more info and source)



(That blue part for Windows is pretty small, btw).

It may not be as popular for enterprise servers, but it runs pretty much the vast majority of the servers that let enterprises talk to each other/the outside world, and the same servers that let us have this argument. And Linus Torvalds may have started out as a bedroom programmer, but I think it's safe to say that the situation is not exactly the same. In fact, he gets paid to do pretty much whatever he wants. Seriously: the Linux Foundation cannot tell him what to work on or what not to work on; the only real requirement is that he continues to work on the Linux kernel and continues to do so openly (open as in open source). Bedroom coders are also the reason that Britain had such a massive games industry in past decades; a trend that sadly did not continue.

To address your second paragraph, joining the Linux Foundation would imply that they are making a commitment to open-source software - you can't get much more open source than the Linux Foundation. If they're not making good on that commitment then what the hell are they doing in the Foundation? It's not all about open source software either - see the part about crippling a pretty damn neat feature of one of their chipsets under Linux. People are used to using binary blobs and proprietary drivers - it's almost necessary in some cases - but not proprietary drivers which leave features out. I can understand not wanting to give away the keys to the safe, but that doesn't mean that you can get away with putting out a crippled and half-arsed attempt either.

While we're on the subject of giving away the keys to the safe, do you honestly think that someone is going to be able to reverse-engineer Nvidia's hardware just by getting a look at the driver source code? The code on it's own is useless without the hardware to run it on. Sure there's some proprietary/sensitive stuff in there, but it's not as if any Tom/Dick/Harry with a spare million or so could look at the driver source code and suddenly be able to release an actual physical hardware product based on it. Any companies/people/players that have the facilities and resources to do that are likely already in the business of making or selling graphics chips anyway; they may be able to gain some advantage by seeing what one of the big boys can do (or what their direct competitors are doing), but Nvidia aren't going to crumble because of it.