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Linus Torvalds Gives 'Thumbs Up' To Nvidia For Nouveau Contributions
sfcrazy writes "Linus Torvalds has had some harsh words for Nvidia in the past. Their failure to work constructively with the Linux community is especially disappointing in light of the company's large presence in the Android market. That said, where there is life, there is change, and that is just what happened yesterday. Torvalds publicly gave a thumbs-up to Nvidia for contributing basic support for the recently released Nvidia K1 processor to Nouveau; something that was totally unexpected but received with open arms. 'Hey, this time I'm raising a thumb for nvidia. Good times,' said Linus."
Torvalds has said in the past something about that he doesn't want to associate with "free software" (or at least FSF) types because they're so "extreme" or such (can't find a link sorry). (Also that if a GNU kernel or 386BSD had existed that he probably wouldn't've wrote Linux.)
That doesn't excuse G+ use (the first link actually caught me off guard...me and my stupid blind-clicking), but he doesn't see himself as so much of a strict FOSS advocate, so you probably see why he wouldn't give as much of a crap about whether the publishing channel is FOSS as, say, you or rms.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Google+, despite what a lot of people think, is very popular for companies to utilize for work projects. Hangouts is a great way to create conference calls, and since its tied into your other Google services like Drive, you can pretty much use it as a company intranet. I have been a contractor for companies that had employees across the states, and most of them have used G+ in the way I described. I would simply be added to a hangout for meetings with the team, they would place the files I needed access to on Drive and then there was little risk of me getting access to more critical business stuff. I was also part of a contracting team that just had a G+ page, and we would meet with clients in the exact same way. I personally didn't like this method, as I prefer to have more face time with clients, but it seemed to work well as a free platform to do business.
If we assume that the Linux team does something similar, its probably easy for Linus to get his ideas across on a social media platform where a decent portion of his development community lives. I have seen many ex-Google friends follow this same trend when they leave Google and create their start-ups. Chris Messina do it with NeonMob, as well as a few others that I met at Plus20. I cannot say this is necessarily the single best method, but it might be that they don't like FB, Twitter's limitations make it harder to utilize in this manner, so G+ is the next best place to put your ideas down for a large user base to view.
Nothing wrong with being an ass, if the cause is just and the talent is used in moderation.
The results and tact that Linus uses this falls clearly in the acceptable category. He believes in high standards, but never goes out-of-bounds into silly land.
Something to admire, in my book.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
"Though if memory serves, didn't Torvalds and Stallman have an argument on Google+? If even Stallman thinks Google+ is acceptable enough, it can't be that undermining to the value of Free systems."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
I kind of doubt Richard Stallman has a Google+ account tough there are probably multiple fake accounts of him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
"For personal reasons, he generally does not actively browse the web from his computer; rather, he uses wget and reads the fetched pages from his e-mail mailbox, claiming to limit direct access via browsers to a few sites such as his own or those related to his work with GNU and the FSF."
Well, it's better than Facebook at least.
Are there FOSS alternatives to Facebook and Google+ that are actually used by a number of people?
Linus uses Google+ for more than just commenting on kernels and such, he sends photos what's happening on his vacations and so forth, like a typical social network person. However as a minor celebrity he can have people follow him without him accepting friend requests and such, split people into separate groups for posting purposes (though I heard facebook evolved to do this also).
I'm on Google+, as my only Google product, and it does the job and seems to work. I'm not sure why people hate it, except for the Facebook fans who think everyone must be there or be nowhere.
Then its good enough for me too. So "Thumbs up!" Nvidia!
John_Chalisque
Torvalds has said in the past something about that he doesn't want to associate with "free software" (or at least FSF) types because they're so "extreme" or such (can't find a link sorry).
This probably isn't the link that you were referring to but in the discussion around GPLv3 he does mention that Linux has always been Open Source as opposed to Free Software and the FSF evangelizing Linux as a free software project is not something he advocates.
I'm on Google+, as my only Google product, and it does the job and seems to work. I'm not sure why people hate it, except for the Facebook fans who think everyone must be there or be nowhere.
Its not the facebook fans that hate it.
Its the people who have seen the abuse that things like facebook have done to violate people's privacy.
To date we have only Google's word that the only thing they will do with your Plus data is serve you ads.
But intelligent people realize this is a hollow promise, one that can be violated by Google themselves, or any random
hacker that manages to penetrate Google's security, or any random NSA agent that wants to gen up a letter.
When one of these copycat services, provides public/private key encryption capabilities with the server side
not knowing your private key, let me know. But in the meantime, I trust regular old email (encrypted where necessary)
more than a central repository in the hands of a third party that can't make any money without selling something
to me, or breaking their promise and selling me to someone else After all, once you agree to go
public with a Plus profile, you've essentially surrendered the last vestige of your privacy.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
very important.
if you use linux, you understand that nouveau isn't about "competing" with the binary driver. It has many advanatages that come with open source such as unlimited redistribution rights, and it plays nice with other drivers, between the two making it the only option for LiveCDs and with that install CDs.
Noveau is almostly always installed by default with Xorg. It also works on a larger variety of hardware.
Nouvea is essential for getting a GUI on linux to "just work", even if the proprietary blob is better.
nVidia's drivers have been the reason I've consistently purchased their products. On any OS, ATi/AMD have been consistently buggy and useless.
For personal reasons, he generally does not actively browse the web from his computer; rather, he uses wget and reads the fetched pages from his e-mail mailbox, claiming to limit direct access via browsers to a few sites such as his own or those related to his work with GNU and the FSF
He's an "Amish" programmer?
You'be either never owned an nvidia product, or an ati.
I've owned two ati machines. For both of them, ati grew tired of supporting them long before I was done with the hardware. Now I have a laptop that works great except for its worthless ati video card. The open source driver is so slow it is worthless and the closed source one doesn't support a modern x11 server.
Nvidia may be closed source, but it works.
Actually, it sounds more like he has principles and wishes to stick to them. In a world of unprincipled people (such as people who sacrifice freedom for safety), I guess principled people would sound "crazy" to those people.
When I upgraded my PC I used the old parts to build an XBMC HTPC. The old MB was perfect because it had onboard video, audio, ethernet so it didn't require any cards (super low profile).
The onboard video was an ATI Radeon HD 4xxx and a pain in the butt. I couldn't just make a bootable thumbdrive as > Ubuntu 12.04 wouldn't support that card. And the XBMC version that was bundled with 12.04 had other issues.
Why, exactly?
- AMD's open driver is in *awesome* shape in latest 3.13, 3.12 brought the biggest improvements.
- AMD has been invested millions in open projects like Gallium3D, Mesa, etc to improve their drivers.
- AMD has been released specs for their hardware since 2006.
I HATE Google+ for one simple reason... Google is trying very, very hard to push it down the throats of everyone using any google services.
I used-to write reviews for Android apps in the Play Store, no problem... Now I can't do so, nor even vote an app, or a review of an app as helpful, unhelpful, or flag it as spam, without a G+ account. Nag nag nag. Strange that everything worked fine before G+, but now G+ is strictly required.
Nearly the same is true for YouTube. There is no end to the nagging about linking a G+ account. And they make it a one-click process, so you click "OK" once by accident, and you've got a G+ account populated with your private information and address book from your gmail account, and all your information is now subjected to their insanely intrusive G+ (lack-of...) privacy policy.
Google+ is plain, old-fashioned, SPAM.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Maybe if those FSF types had spent more time innovating and creating a product people want then people might actually use Free Software,
*cough* *cough* Gcc, Libc, etc etc *cough* *cough*
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Hey, I'm a Nouveau developer and I had a chance to discuss with an nvidia engineer @ FOSDEM. This collaboration is strictly limited to Tegra and on the kernel side (at least for the moment).
There is some overlap with the desktop cards (mostly Kepler family) which will allow us to benefit of this collaboration in more than the SoC world. This is however very interesting and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it will pan out!
-- running XBMCbuntu on AT5IONT-I since forever
...which has an nvidia GPU. Your point?
The main problem with privacy on social networks, as far as I can tell, is presenting different information to different people. You might like to use your social network account to say something to a bunch of family members (perhaps talking about a reunion, or problems with a deadbeat sibling, etc.) which you don't want your employer or other acquaintances to see. Or you might like to share political things with your close friends which of course you don't want your employer or the whole world to see. So you might not care too much that Google the company sees this stuff and shows you ads based on it, but you don't want some prospective employer browsing your profile and seeing all your dirty laundry and political views or whatever.
The big problem with Facebook is that they simply don't seem to have any concept of this. They think everything should be out in the open for everyone in the world to see; it's apparent by the way they've behaved. They've only put in privacy protections because of intense user demand, and even then they usually don't work very well and frequently don't work at all, the settings change on you randomly, etc. It's plainly obvious they really don't want you keeping secrets from your employer or anyone else in the world, and they have an agenda of eliminating all privacy entirely. Google, OTOH, for all their faults, does seem to understand this, which is why they have "circles" on Google+, to keep things separate, which is why Linus can make kernel-related posts to the world at large, while sharing family photos with his close friends and family members without everyone else seeing that stuff. That's something you just can't do with Facebook. Google does have its problems (like trying to force everyone into G+, pushing everyone to use real names on YouTube, totally screwing up the UI in Gmail, etc.), but I've never heard of them screwing up privacy protections the way Facebook has.
Letting Google, or any third party, be privy to all of your company's internal affairs is quite a precarious position to voluntarily put yourself in.
Yes, but tons of companies do it all the time by using "cloud" services. You can't single out Google for this; if your company uses any cloud services at all, then it's making the same mistake. This also applies to the many, many large corporations who outsource their IT services. It's all-or-nothing: either never use any 3rd-party cloud services at all, and do all your IT in-house, or stop worrying about it. You can't outsource your IT support services to Dell and then complain about Google having access to your company's data. Google is no better or worse than any other 3rd-party company (except Facebook).
The project had weak leadership and a huge amount of infighting, which is the real reason 3 different *BSDs forked out of it. Its quite possible Torvolds looked at the BSD mailinglists and said "forget them!"
Is it safe to be exposed to such high levels of irony?
FYI, a $35 Raspberry Pi works great as an XBMC box. Silent, low power, and can be taped to the back of the TV.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.