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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."

12 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why do Free/Open Source gurus use Google+? by Jakeula · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Linus is an asswhole for the greater good by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  3. If its good enough for Linus by John+Allsup · · Score: 4, Funny

    Then its good enough for me too. So "Thumbs up!" Nvidia!

    --
    John_Chalisque
  4. Re:Why do Free/Open Source gurus use Google+? by exomondo · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Why do Free/Open Source gurus use Google+? by icebike · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  6. Re:nVidia binary blob drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    nVidia's drivers have been the reason I've consistently purchased their products. On any OS, ATi/AMD have been consistently buggy and useless.

  7. Re: me too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Linus gets results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:Why do Free/Open Source gurus use Google+? by evilviper · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  10. Re:Why do Free/Open Source gurus use Google+? by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  11. Collaboration strictly limited to Tegra K1+ by mupuf · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

    1. Re:Collaboration strictly limited to Tegra K1+ by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's not news that nVidia will never be able to release full information on their legacy lines. They're encumbered by having got into bed with Microsoft. They tied their cards closely to DirectX and they'll never escape. The Tegra product is a wholly separate line not tainted by that relationship.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"