Linus Torvalds on NVIDIA's non-Linux Optimus support

http://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-on-nvidias-non-linux-support-f-you

 

Whilst I think the entire article itself is rubbish, especially how it seems to be focused on 1 thing when there are so many better things being discussed, I really like the video.

 

What is the reason for not supporting better?

 

Lack of market share probably. I figure nVidia is weighing the potential for extra income vs. the extra workload of supporting another platform.

Also, lest I repeat myself, it would help a lot if Linux had a stable driver API. I know, I know - organic development, FOSS drivers, constant innovation, etc... The problem is, if you don't have good driver support, nobody will use your OS. And if nobody uses your OS, there's even less incentive for hardware manufacturers to write drivers for it.

Windows has the best backward compatibility of any OS ever, and has had driver API stability over years and years - there are drivers that work on Windows 2000 and Windows Vista, without any tweaks or modifications. Windows is also used on almost every desktop. This is not only because of Microsoft's underhanded methods; it's also because Windows makes less work for hardware makers.

It's all really quite a shame. Most Linux distros have serious advantages over Microsoft's offerings, and really deserve to catch on in the desktop world. Proprietary drivers would help that, ideology be damned.

[/mini rant]

Oh by the way. Am I the only one who thinks the success of Torvalds' kernel has gotten to the man's head a bit?

 

Maybe Nvidia has higher quality standards than others? Its Windows 8 RPs's beta driver, for example, was delayed for almost a month to meet certain standards.

 

I agree with the first part of you post but have to disagree here. Windows has terrible backwards compatibility for drivers. I've had to replace at least 5 "legacy" devices because the drivers won't install properly on Windows 7 and these are devices that worked perfectly on windows XP and from well known brands like HP and Dell. Windows has made great strides with backwards compatibility but they aren't the best. As much as I hate to say this I think Apple has the best backwards compatible driver support right now. The same devices windows 7 fails to recognize or install drivers for works perfectly on Mac OS X and works okay on linux.

Then again this is my experience and yours (and others) may be different.

 

One argument is that a stable ABI is not needed as drivers should be submitted to the kernel for maintenance and would not suffer ABI incompatibilities.
But on the flip side it could well be that there are licensed technology restrictions that prevent Nvidia and others from being able to allow this to happen - might not be a market share issue, but legally they are restricted themselves, what should they do ?

IMHO one approach would be to assist the open source driver developers where they can to provide better quality open drivers and provide closed source addon drivers for those that need to extra features that can't be integrated.

Though Microsoft offers good hardware backwards compatibility, on numerous occasions I found hardware manufacturers lacking is enabling support across multiple versions of Windows - something that open drivers exist for Linux I find superior (My experience is all my old no longer used hardware still works in Linux, some of it no longer works in Win7).

 

Quidsup's reaction: -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtVot1L5Ew0-