Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

youtu.be

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 147 posts

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#31

Post by cdr »

JDShu wrote: post #17
tshadwell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still much harder to find ATI drivers for Linux than Nvidia drivers.

Wait, what? There are radeon drivers within the open source ecosystem, and AMD also supplies an alternate proprietary driver, bad quality as it is, for those people who find 3D support essential. You can make the argument that nVidia Linux drivers are much better, but I don't see where you're getting the idea that it's hard to find AMD drivers.

The open source AMD driver has improved a lot over the past couple of years, it's really pretty good. "Pretty good" is unfortunately not good enough for really 3D intensive tasks like newer games, etc. Good enough for the vast majority of desktop tasks though including hardware-accelerated video rendering etc.

The closed AMD driver is pathetically bad. Neither multi-monitor mode works for me in Gnome3, due to from what I gather is AMD not keeping up well with architecture changes. AMD is also dropping support for their oldest architecture in their next driver release, leaving a ton of cards - some still being sold today - with nothing but the open source driver anyway.

My next video card is going to be an Nvidia for sure. Whatever Nvidia's faults, their proprietary linux support cannot possibly be as poor as AMD's.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#32

Post by dwc »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #4

TLDR: Linus at a Q&A, a woman asks why Nvidia still isn't providing any support for Optimus on Linux, Linus responds that Nvidia is being really difficult about that without good reason and "Fuck You Nvidia!" (flicks off the camera). Her question actually starts a minute earlier than the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=48m14s PS - Bravo Linus. This is issue is a real PITA, and a bit incongruent con…

> incongruent considering the historically awesome driver support Nvidia has provided for Linux

It's not really incongruent. Nvidia has provided driver support for Linux, but that does no good for, say, FreeBSD. This driver support is in lieu of providing specs. They're keeping a lid on things and maintaining control. There are very good hackers who would make open source drivers if they had specs. Arguably less buggy drivers. Since they make sure they have control it's not surprising that they either 1) think this isn't worth their trouble, or 2) have actively decided they don't want this to happen, for whatever business reason.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#33

Post by evincarofautumn »

_delirium wrote: post #10

I'm behind the times here, but it took me a second to realize this was really Linus in the video. I still think of him as looking like the now-10-year-old photo gracing his Wikipedia article ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linus_Torvalds.jpeg ), but he looks a lot older here, possibly accentuated by the business attire.

I think Linus looks better these days. He’s lost weight, and the grey hair and glasses make him look wiser.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#34

Post by paol »

flabbergasted wrote: post #8
dazzawazza wrote: post #5

It's a shame he doesn't go in to specifics, just saying "Fuck you" makes him look like a child, which I am sure he isn't. What is the problem?

Unlike Intel and ATI, Nvidia doesn't play nice with open source developers.

While this is true, nvidia's closed-source drivers do have the virtue of actually working.

(ok, this is slightly unfair to intel's video drivers, they work fine as long as you don't need 3D acceleration)

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#36

Post by lsc »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #25
alecco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't reflect his opinion. First, Linus states Nvidia is an exception, one of the worst trouble spots. And he is also very upset because Nvidia at the same time tries to sell a lot of chips into the Android market, a Linux based system. Very ungrateful of Nvidia. I agree, fuck Nvidia.

Ungrateful? Since when is that part of any sensible business plan? I don't know why Linus would expect a corporation to devote significant resources to an endeavor out of kindness. Nvidia will play nicely with Linux when it becomes in their financial interests to do so. Edit: I expected downvotes and I'll gladly take them if someone can explain to me how Nvidia is being unreasonable.

>Ungrateful? Since when is that part of any sensible business plan?

If you depend on free software to sell your hardware, it is probably in your interest to see to it that the people that write the software that is required to sell your hardware don't hate you.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#38

Post by ElCabron »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #25
alecco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't reflect his opinion. First, Linus states Nvidia is an exception, one of the worst trouble spots. And he is also very upset because Nvidia at the same time tries to sell a lot of chips into the Android market, a Linux based system. Very ungrateful of Nvidia. I agree, fuck Nvidia.

Ungrateful? Since when is that part of any sensible business plan? I don't know why Linus would expect a corporation to devote significant resources to an endeavor out of kindness. Nvidia will play nicely with Linux when it becomes in their financial interests to do so. Edit: I expected downvotes and I'll gladly take them if someone can explain to me how Nvidia is being unreasonable.

Do you think NVidia is not using Linux as part of their business ? If they use it or used it in the past, they could be more supportive. I wonder what will happen when Linux will be a gaming platform ?(Steam and others are going in that direction).

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#39

Post by forrestthewoods »

alecco wrote: post #30
forrestthewoods wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ungrateful? Since when is that part of any sensible business plan? I don't know why Linus would expect a corporation to devote significant resources to an endeavor out of kindness. Nvidia will play nicely with Linux when it becomes in their financial interests to do so. Edit: I expected downvotes and I'll gladly take them if someone can explain to me how Nvidia is being unreasonable.

Linus rightfully singled them out. Are you saying the others are stupid?! Nvidia has the behaviour of a sociopath.

The video in question (including the woman's question) require a lot of outside knowledge to understand. Maybe I'm missing critical information? Right now Nvidia Optimus technology work only on Windows 7. It doesn't even work for Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Why should Nvidia devote resources, potentially a significant amount, to make Optimus work on Linux? I do not buy the argument that they should do so out of gratefulness that the Linux based Android OS let's them sell a large number of unrelated chips.

I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but citing a lack of "gratefulness" is not compelling.

Re: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

#40

Post by flabbergasted »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #39
alecco wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus rightfully singled them out. Are you saying the others are stupid?! Nvidia has the behaviour of a sociopath.

The video in question (including the woman's question) require a lot of outside knowledge to understand. Maybe I'm missing critical information? Right now Nvidia Optimus technology work only on Windows 7. It doesn't even work for Windows Vista or Windows XP. Why should Nvidia devote resources, potentially a significant amount, to make Optimus work on Linux? I do not buy the argument that they should do so out of grat…

I think the real issue is that Nvidia is the most closed when it comes to releasing specs. With the proper specs, open source developers will produce better drivers than Nvidia.
Post reply on HN