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Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds

370 points by flabbergasted 14y ago

You have to love Linus for not being afraid to speak his mind.

rosser 14y ago
"I wish everybody was as nice as I am."
stesch 14y ago
What have I expected? He really says it and gives the finger.
SkyMarshal 14y ago
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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=48m14s PS - Bravo Linus. This is issue is a real PITA, and a bit incongruent considering the historically awesome driver support Nvidia has provided for Linux.
- alecco 14y ago
  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.
  - forrestthewoods 14y ago
    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.
    - g-garron 14y ago
      You are right, business are business. But you do not need to be a badass. And the world changes (the ones that needs you now, will be the ones you need tomorrow), I have learned that the most grateful you are in business, the better business you do. Edited for clarity.
      - chalst 14y ago
        Quite. Given that the PC market, which I believe is the source of their highest margin sales, seems to be shrinking, perhaps high-handedness with potential allies is not the wisest course of action.
    - alecco 14y ago
      Linus rightfully singled them out. Are you saying the others are stupid?! Nvidia has the behaviour of a sociopath.
      - forrestthewoods 14y ago
        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.
        flabbergasted 14y ago
        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.
        14y ago
- bingbing 14y ago
  Your link didn't quite work for me, starting in the 49th minute somewhere, Using a fragment identifier to demarc the time offset works better for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=48m14s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=48m14s
- dwc 14y ago
  > 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.
  - cookiecaper 14y ago
    I haven't checked recently but nVidia also used to provide decent support for FreeBSD and Solaris.
    - fceccon 14y ago
      Yes they provide drivers for FreeBSD and Solaris, unfortunately what they don't provide is CUDA for this 2 platforms.
    - dwc 14y ago
      Perhaps. Now what about OpenBSD and NetBSD, or whatever else? If they provide specs then they don't have to write drivers, but they don't get to bless or withhold their blessing. There was a stink a while back where Adaptec had been providing drivers for FreeBSD, but then stopped. People were stuck either not upgrading their boxes (bad!) or moving off their RAID setup (painful, expensive!). It's ugly. With specs, there is not this issue. The (pervasive) idea that vendors providing drivers for your system of choice, for the time being is being open source friendly is something the vendor promotes, but it's not actually friendly.
- AlexDanger 14y ago
  Later in the talk someone says they are working for nVidia and doing something with Tegra. I couldnt quite make it out, what is he saying? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=player_detailpage#t=3630s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=playe...
  - grannyg00se 14y ago
    He said they are now upstreaming tegra (super? / supra?) I guess he's talking about pushing out some new driver support.
    - zokier 14y ago
      >upstreaming tegra (super? / supra?) support
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  I've always harbored the hope that nVidia is working behind the scenes on a release that supports KMS/Wayland, and that the release of Optimus support will be released simultaneously. It makes sense when you consider that Optimus support is probably a pretty big change and putting that investment in the legacy X11 non-KMS driver would be a waste when KMS will be a requirement for all new distros in 2 years' time. It's worth noting that just last night they released a stable driver that (finally) supports RandR 1.2. From what I understand this was also a significant change and it may bode well for future standardization improvements like KMS (moves multi-monitor management away from the proprietary TwinView driver components into standard xrandr, for instance, so that is complexity the KMS version will not have to handle). Fingers crossed that they release this imaginary driver soon. :)
  - rmk2 14y ago
    > It's worth noting that just last night they released a stable driver that (finally) supports RandR 1.2 The XRandR support in the driver is not yet stable [1]. The 302.xx line is currently in beta, but will support both XRandR 1.2 & 1.3 at the same time. That part also works flawlessly, however, your mileage may vary in regards to suspend/hibernate, since both I and multiple others on the nvidia forums experience serious problems with resume from either, i.e. the computer hard locks (and doesn't even respond to ssh etc.), which requires you to powercycle it. So while the XRandR is a huge step forward, it is not without problems yet. [1]: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/latest.txt shows you the latest stable driver, which is 295.59
    - cookiecaper 14y ago
      Please see http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2564605&postcount=4 http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2564605&p... ; as of June 16, 302.17 is classified as a "new official release" in the "Current NVIDIA Linux graphics driver releases" thread. 295.xx is now classified the "long-lived branch release". ArchLinux has already sent out packages for this release in its stable update channel: https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/trunk?h=packages/nvidia&id=e6efe82d02fab1d94b69874169a0d74d452f75d7 https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/...
- superxor 14y ago
  I have a Notebook with Optimus, and watching this made me so happy. Nvidia is being an ass by not supporting Optimus.
- rsanchez1 14y ago
  Even nVidia can't properly handle Optimus on Windows, so it's no surprise they aren't even trying on Linux.
dazzawazza 14y ago
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?
- flabbergasted 14y ago
  Unlike Intel and ATI, Nvidia doesn't play nice with open source developers.
  - tshadwell 14y ago
    It's still much harder to find ATI drivers for Linux than Nvidia drivers.
    - JDShu 14y ago
      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.
      - cdr 14y ago
        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.
srean 14y ago
Aside from the FU, its a nice and interesting talk with an engaging Q&A that spans: decision making, being blunt by choice, micro-optimization, licensing, commercial interests, limited success on the desktop....
flabbergasted 14y ago
From "If you like subversion, you are ugly and stupid" and now this. I always enjoy this man's talks.
- simonbrown 14y ago
  It was CVS.
  - flabbergasted 14y ago
    His comment was more general: "You can disagree with me as much as you want, but during this talk, by definition, anybody who disagrees is stupid and ugly, so keep that in mind." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8&feature=youtu.be&t=8m12s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8&feature=youtu...
  - exDM69 14y ago
    Well, it was targeted at both, CVS and Subversion and centralized version control in general. He commented on the "SVN is CVS done right" that you can't do it right since it's the wrong thing to do in the first place.
_delirium 14y ago
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 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linus_Torvalds.jpeg), but he looks a lot older here, possibly accentuated by the business attire.
- tomjakubowski 14y ago
  Same thing happened to Larry Page. When I saw the Charlie Rose interview I hardly recognized him.
- evincarofautumn 14y ago
  I think Linus looks better these days. He’s lost weight, and the grey hair and glasses make him look wiser.
  - jvehent 14y ago
    I guess he just proved he isn't any wiser, after all :)
- zerostar07 14y ago
  really? i think he ages very gracefully, even looks younger than 43
unkoman 14y ago
A man who speaks his feelings about his passion, oh how will we ever handle this.
benwr 14y ago
"I like offending people, because I think the people who get offended should be offended."
- sho_hn 14y ago
  One for the ages. Added to Wikiquote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds#2012 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds#2012
- faragon 14y ago
  Link to the source (Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=61m28s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=61m28s I've found it while watching the video after the "fuck you nVidia" discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4121698 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4121698 Edit: Actual quote: "I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended" (without the "the" before "people").
deleted 14y ago
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FlyingSnake 14y ago
I hope NVidia notices this and instead of going into a shell, helps make Optimus chips a first class citizen in Linux land.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tubbo 14y ago
wow linus is really the original DHH
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  Linus is so ridiculously out of DHH's league that just the existence of this comparison is asinine.
castilhor 14y ago
here's a gif http://cl.ly/313u2y471p1F0G3Q1a2i http://cl.ly/313u2y471p1F0G3Q1a2i
cpinto 14y ago
Let the memes begin! Here's an image template of Linus giving the finger: https://skitch.com/cpinto/ebemj/linus https://skitch.com/cpinto/ebemj/linus
- burke 14y ago
  As much as this isn't reddit, I can get behind this.
- sp332 14y ago
  Try posting it to http://canv.as/ http://canv.as/ you might get a better response :)
- m_for_monkey 14y ago
  Here it is: http://memegenerator.net/Angry-Linus http://memegenerator.net/Angry-Linus.
gdi2290 14y ago
he also said Microsoft is full of shit
kennywinker 14y ago
if you skip ahead to 1:00:30 a guy in the audience who works at Nvidia responds during Q&A, ever so politely. Linus responds, quite politely as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=youtu.be&t=60m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=youtu...
kristofferR 14y ago
The title you gave it doesn't make much sense considering what this post/part of the speech and following discussion really is about - Nvidia's lack of support for Linux and Linus' reaction. You should have titled it "Linus Torvalds Angry at Nvidia, Flips the Finger at Speach" or something. That would have been more descriptive, just a heads up for next time! ;)
- flabbergasted 14y ago
  I used the title 'Linus to Nvidia: "Fuck You"'. Apparently, a clueless moderator decided to change it.
StephenFalken 14y ago
We desperately need open sourced chip cores. An open community would build them with open source EDA tools and the final tapeout would be physically produced by a foundry. I know open source EDA tools are still decades away from proprietary ones, but we won't go anywhere if we don't start somewhere.
- vidarh 14y ago
  We do have open sourced chip cores: http://opencores.org/ http://opencores.org/ It's still in its infancy, and faces a lot of challenges that open source software doesn't, but it's come a long way in a few years.
saurik 14y ago
The original title of this submission was 'Linus to Nvidia: "Fuck You"', which was renamed by someone (the moderators? can the submitter change the title?) after a ton of people had upvoted and commented on it, and despite the link being not to the entire video but instead to a specific point in the video for which the title of the entire video is probably not even an appropriate description. So, when people are reading the comments of this submission in the future, please keep this in mind as a historical note. (This, humorously, was actually the kind of situation that caused the complaint[1] that itself turned into a massive hullabaloo recently regarding what can be discussed on HN and what the policies regarding hell-banning are; to view the reference you will need showdead.) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013
- flabbergasted 14y ago
  I guess the moderators were offended by a four letter word. "People who get offended should be offended!" - Linus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=3672s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=3672s
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - aurelianito 14y ago
    I really agree with Linus on this one. I usually say that when one person offends other person, the one who is wrong is the offended person.
  - kitsune_ 14y ago
    That was a great line by him. "I like offending people because I think people who get offended should be offended."
- JoeCortopassi 14y ago
  The new title completely changed what I was expecting when I clicked this link, which was much appreciated when I opened it at my in-laws with the volume on :-/. I honestly thought this was a follow up to the "Linus to Nvidia: 'F*ck You'" post for some commentary, and now feel like I just got Rick-Rolled... Edit: Seriously though, is the new rule that we aren't allowed to submit anything other than the page's title?
cnp 14y ago
ughhhh by the time you get to that fuck you part you're cheering along as well... perfect timing
wordplay 14y ago
http://youtu.be/MShbP3OpASA?t=20m50s http://youtu.be/MShbP3OpASA?t=20m50s "If you think like a computer, writing C actually makes sense."
nnq 14y ago
...anybody else picked up the line where he basically says that WEB PROGRAMMING ISN'T [REAL] PROGRAMMING? I wonder what a community like HN, with so many people developing web apps thinks about this... :) Quote (~min 11:30): "I have never in my love done any web programming because I'm not interested, I think that kind of stuff... there's MIS people to do that for you, right? I'm interested in programming" [edited some spelling bugs]
- sdfjhjhjhjhd 14y ago
  web programming is boring CRUD work in almost all cases.
- pm90 14y ago
  I hope people like him continue to say things like that. He is a systems engineer who loves what he does so of course he feels that what he does is better than everything else. That said, he also mentions that he feels bad when people take him too seriously on such things, so don't :)
zokier 14y ago
Was there anything else of interest in that talk?
duvuhq 14y ago
There is a new video only with the answer! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g
zerostar07 14y ago
I liked that he likes the open science publication movement. I think he would be a great advocate for it .
kabdib 14y ago
There is a bunch of hardware in the world that is inaccessible. I don't see this changing. Reasons include: Keeping competitors away from what you think are valuable secrets and maintaining an advantage. Keeping people away from features that, if misused, could result in chip damage. Keeping security holes secret (e.g., badly designed DMA hardware that could be exploited, if the flaws were known). Limiting access to known buggy features, or unfinished features that either don't work or that could leak damaging hints about strategic direction. You have purchased or licensed 3rd party technology that you contractually cannot divulge details of. For interoperability with other products you have embedded knowledge of them in the product, under NDA. More: It's expensive to document chips to the point that outside development can be done. Perhaps the documentation doesn't exist, at all, and would have to be reverse-engineered out of the chip design (yes, this happens). It's expensive to write drivers for multiple platforms, or even to get software into a state where it can be consumed by an outside party (just dumping a tree onto GitHub is /not/ a release). You feel that "forking" would result in a loss of control of your own product (and would dramatically increase the cost of future releases, lest you break things). You regularly rev chips and cover the changes transparently in the software layer, and this would /not/ be transparent if you released product details (thus increasing the cost of revisions). More (the slimey side): You have misappropriated technology and divulging it would be harmful to you. There are design errors or bugs verging on malfeasance that could expose you to litigation. You have lied about the product's capabilities and a release would reveal this (whereupon, litigation). Or, it's a pain in the ass, the market is significantly less than 1 percent of your total, and you have a horizontal skyscraper of engineers already behind schedule. "Good faith and being nice" doesn't pay the bills. [I have also heard, from other parts of the industry, that the company in question is hard to deal with].
- joe_the_user 14y ago
  Sure, Some companies have a financial incentive to effective tell the open source movement to f-- off. Sure, when they take that, they may not be being evil on a grand scale. But hey, if they are telling linux to f-- off, it seems appropriate Linus return the favor. He's just making things clear. Is there anything wrong that?
dredmorbius 14y ago
A few observations: 1. One of the highly distinctive characteristics of being a Free Software project leader is having the freedom to speak your mind. What Linus does (hacking the Linux kernel) and who pays him to do it (presently the Linux Foundation) are pretty loosely linked. The primary objective of LF is to fund Linux development, and Linus is pretty much the guy to get that done. If LF didn't pay him for it, someone else would. He can state his opionions on relevant technical matters with few if any fears of repercussions. I'm looking forward to next week's press releases from Nvidia. 2. Linus addresses what Nvidia are doing wrong at a few points, both directly and indirectly. Around 15 minutes in he talks about what Free Software provides in the way of developer freedoms: you can focus on what you are interested in and what you are good at. In Linus's case, issues such as maintaining Linux-related websites, init, QA, and Linux distributions is stuff he fundamentally doesn't care about (while other bits such as, eventually, creating a useful revision control system he does). Free Software lets you focus on your own core competencies. He also makes the point, around 35 minutes, that it's very important that people need to know how he feels about things. Including how he feels about support received from hardware vendors. More specifically, for hardware manufacturers, playing nice and closely with the kernel development community leads to both better product performance and customer relations. The woman asking the Nvidia question clearly wasn't happy with her Nvidia experience. I've learned in assessing hardware compatibility to treat any Nvidia componentry as at best a red flag if not a show-stopper. I'll actively go out of my way to avoid their products (Intel have gone out of their way to ensure compatibility and open specs, my most recent purchases centered on Intel chipsets, in particular for graphics). Playing well with devs also means that issues are addressed in a timely manner, compromises can be reached, and in general communications are open and positive. I don't know the full backstory on the Nvidia front (though searching the LKML mailing list should turn up some bits). 3. ... and yes, the HN moderators fubared this one.
jc-denton 14y ago
F you to the only GPU actually working on Linux. Probably Intel or AMD are a bit more open about the specs, but the only one actually working. I have used them both for graphics and computational stuff with CUDA. Saying Nvidia is bad because they do not publish their specs is ridiculous IMHO. If you start thinking about how some things in a modern CPU are implemented (caching mechanism for example) you will notice that about zero information is published :) They sure have an x64 front end but when it comes to how the CPU works internally things are completely different.
abruzzi 14y ago
At one point in the video he says he's proud that Linux is the only OS (I'm presuming he meant kernel) that is in mobile and desktop/server systems. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the assumption that OSX and iOS were both based on essentially the same Darwin/XNU kernel?
ellie42 14y ago
MS Vista has no drivers: "Vista sucks! Mi$roSoft sucks!" GNU/Linux has no drivers: "Fuck NVIDIA!"
- wowoc 14y ago
  GNU/Linux has drivers, but they are distributed as a binary blob compiled against a specific version of kernel.
dbbolton 14y ago
Does anyone know the full story behind the "suicidal" reference?
TimMontague 14y ago
This was a really interesting talk. Does anyone know where to find other lectures (or whatever this is technically called) by other influential programmers/computer scientists?
rsanchez1 14y ago
Optimus has to be one of the worst products nVidia has pushed. There's the Linux incompatibility, and there's the little problem where you are always tied to the vastly inferior integrated graphics. Games that I should be able to play at 60+ FPS with highest settings and resolution play at 20-30 FPS because I can't use the graphics card to the fullest. Then I need to do obscure hacks to get some games to even recognize the nVidia graphics card because the game developer thought it would be a great idea to wait until you downloaded and installed a 7GB game and launched it to tell you, "Oh, you're one of those Optimusers, well fuck you." Just google "sonic generations optimus" and you'll see what I mean.

370 points by flabbergasted 14y ago

You have to love Linus for not being afraid to speak his mind.

rosser 14y ago

"I wish everybody was as nice as I am."

stesch 14y ago

What have I expected? He really says it and gives the finger.

SkyMarshal 14y ago

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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=48m14s PS - Bravo Linus. This is issue is a real PITA, and a bit incongruent considering the historically awesome driver support Nvidia has provided for Linux.

alecco 14y ago
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.
- forrestthewoods 14y ago
  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.
  - g-garron 14y ago
    You are right, business are business. But you do not need to be a badass. And the world changes (the ones that needs you now, will be the ones you need tomorrow), I have learned that the most grateful you are in business, the better business you do. Edited for clarity.
    - chalst 14y ago
      Quite. Given that the PC market, which I believe is the source of their highest margin sales, seems to be shrinking, perhaps high-handedness with potential allies is not the wisest course of action.
  - alecco 14y ago
    Linus rightfully singled them out. Are you saying the others are stupid?! Nvidia has the behaviour of a sociopath.
    - forrestthewoods 14y ago
      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.
      - flabbergasted 14y ago
        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.
        14y ago
bingbing 14y ago
Your link didn't quite work for me, starting in the 49th minute somewhere, Using a fragment identifier to demarc the time offset works better for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=48m14s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=48m14s
dwc 14y ago
> 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.
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  I haven't checked recently but nVidia also used to provide decent support for FreeBSD and Solaris.
  - fceccon 14y ago
    Yes they provide drivers for FreeBSD and Solaris, unfortunately what they don't provide is CUDA for this 2 platforms.
  - dwc 14y ago
    Perhaps. Now what about OpenBSD and NetBSD, or whatever else? If they provide specs then they don't have to write drivers, but they don't get to bless or withhold their blessing. There was a stink a while back where Adaptec had been providing drivers for FreeBSD, but then stopped. People were stuck either not upgrading their boxes (bad!) or moving off their RAID setup (painful, expensive!). It's ugly. With specs, there is not this issue. The (pervasive) idea that vendors providing drivers for your system of choice, for the time being is being open source friendly is something the vendor promotes, but it's not actually friendly.
AlexDanger 14y ago
Later in the talk someone says they are working for nVidia and doing something with Tegra. I couldnt quite make it out, what is he saying? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=player_detailpage#t=3630s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=playe...
- grannyg00se 14y ago
  He said they are now upstreaming tegra (super? / supra?) I guess he's talking about pushing out some new driver support.
  - zokier 14y ago
    >upstreaming tegra (super? / supra?) support
cookiecaper 14y ago
I've always harbored the hope that nVidia is working behind the scenes on a release that supports KMS/Wayland, and that the release of Optimus support will be released simultaneously. It makes sense when you consider that Optimus support is probably a pretty big change and putting that investment in the legacy X11 non-KMS driver would be a waste when KMS will be a requirement for all new distros in 2 years' time. It's worth noting that just last night they released a stable driver that (finally) supports RandR 1.2. From what I understand this was also a significant change and it may bode well for future standardization improvements like KMS (moves multi-monitor management away from the proprietary TwinView driver components into standard xrandr, for instance, so that is complexity the KMS version will not have to handle). Fingers crossed that they release this imaginary driver soon. :)
- rmk2 14y ago
  > It's worth noting that just last night they released a stable driver that (finally) supports RandR 1.2 The XRandR support in the driver is not yet stable [1]. The 302.xx line is currently in beta, but will support both XRandR 1.2 & 1.3 at the same time. That part also works flawlessly, however, your mileage may vary in regards to suspend/hibernate, since both I and multiple others on the nvidia forums experience serious problems with resume from either, i.e. the computer hard locks (and doesn't even respond to ssh etc.), which requires you to powercycle it. So while the XRandR is a huge step forward, it is not without problems yet. [1]: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/latest.txt shows you the latest stable driver, which is 295.59
  - cookiecaper 14y ago
    Please see http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2564605&postcount=4 http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2564605&p... ; as of June 16, 302.17 is classified as a "new official release" in the "Current NVIDIA Linux graphics driver releases" thread. 295.xx is now classified the "long-lived branch release". ArchLinux has already sent out packages for this release in its stable update channel: https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/trunk?h=packages/nvidia&id=e6efe82d02fab1d94b69874169a0d74d452f75d7 https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/...
superxor 14y ago
I have a Notebook with Optimus, and watching this made me so happy. Nvidia is being an ass by not supporting Optimus.
rsanchez1 14y ago
Even nVidia can't properly handle Optimus on Windows, so it's no surprise they aren't even trying on Linux.

dazzawazza 14y ago

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?

flabbergasted 14y ago
Unlike Intel and ATI, Nvidia doesn't play nice with open source developers.
- tshadwell 14y ago
  It's still much harder to find ATI drivers for Linux than Nvidia drivers.
  - JDShu 14y ago
    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.
    - cdr 14y ago
      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.

srean 14y ago

Aside from the FU, its a nice and interesting talk with an engaging Q&A that spans: decision making, being blunt by choice, micro-optimization, licensing, commercial interests, limited success on the desktop....

flabbergasted 14y ago

From "If you like subversion, you are ugly and stupid" and now this. I always enjoy this man's talks.

simonbrown 14y ago
It was CVS.
- flabbergasted 14y ago
  His comment was more general: "You can disagree with me as much as you want, but during this talk, by definition, anybody who disagrees is stupid and ugly, so keep that in mind." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8&feature=youtu.be&t=8m12s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8&feature=youtu...
- exDM69 14y ago
  Well, it was targeted at both, CVS and Subversion and centralized version control in general. He commented on the "SVN is CVS done right" that you can't do it right since it's the wrong thing to do in the first place.

_delirium 14y ago

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 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linus_Torvalds.jpeg), but he looks a lot older here, possibly accentuated by the business attire.

tomjakubowski 14y ago
Same thing happened to Larry Page. When I saw the Charlie Rose interview I hardly recognized him.
evincarofautumn 14y ago
I think Linus looks better these days. He’s lost weight, and the grey hair and glasses make him look wiser.
- jvehent 14y ago
  I guess he just proved he isn't any wiser, after all :)
zerostar07 14y ago
really? i think he ages very gracefully, even looks younger than 43

unkoman 14y ago

A man who speaks his feelings about his passion, oh how will we ever handle this.

benwr 14y ago

"I like offending people, because I think the people who get offended should be offended."

sho_hn 14y ago
One for the ages. Added to Wikiquote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds#2012 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds#2012
faragon 14y ago
Link to the source (Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=61m28s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=61m28s I've found it while watching the video after the "fuck you nVidia" discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4121698 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4121698 Edit: Actual quote: "I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended" (without the "the" before "people").

deleted 14y ago

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FlyingSnake 14y ago

I hope NVidia notices this and instead of going into a shell, helps make Optimus chips a first class citizen in Linux land.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

tubbo 14y ago

wow linus is really the original DHH

cookiecaper 14y ago
Linus is so ridiculously out of DHH's league that just the existence of this comparison is asinine.

castilhor 14y ago

here's a gif http://cl.ly/313u2y471p1F0G3Q1a2i http://cl.ly/313u2y471p1F0G3Q1a2i

cpinto 14y ago

Let the memes begin! Here's an image template of Linus giving the finger: https://skitch.com/cpinto/ebemj/linus https://skitch.com/cpinto/ebemj/linus

burke 14y ago
As much as this isn't reddit, I can get behind this.
sp332 14y ago
Try posting it to http://canv.as/ http://canv.as/ you might get a better response :)
m_for_monkey 14y ago
Here it is: http://memegenerator.net/Angry-Linus http://memegenerator.net/Angry-Linus.

gdi2290 14y ago

he also said Microsoft is full of shit

kennywinker 14y ago

if you skip ahead to 1:00:30 a guy in the audience who works at Nvidia responds during Q&A, ever so politely. Linus responds, quite politely as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=youtu.be&t=60m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=youtu...

kristofferR 14y ago

The title you gave it doesn't make much sense considering what this post/part of the speech and following discussion really is about - Nvidia's lack of support for Linux and Linus' reaction. You should have titled it "Linus Torvalds Angry at Nvidia, Flips the Finger at Speach" or something. That would have been more descriptive, just a heads up for next time! ;)

flabbergasted 14y ago
I used the title 'Linus to Nvidia: "Fuck You"'. Apparently, a clueless moderator decided to change it.

StephenFalken 14y ago

We desperately need open sourced chip cores. An open community would build them with open source EDA tools and the final tapeout would be physically produced by a foundry. I know open source EDA tools are still decades away from proprietary ones, but we won't go anywhere if we don't start somewhere.

vidarh 14y ago
We do have open sourced chip cores: http://opencores.org/ http://opencores.org/ It's still in its infancy, and faces a lot of challenges that open source software doesn't, but it's come a long way in a few years.

saurik 14y ago

The original title of this submission was 'Linus to Nvidia: "Fuck You"', which was renamed by someone (the moderators? can the submitter change the title?) after a ton of people had upvoted and commented on it, and despite the link being not to the entire video but instead to a specific point in the video for which the title of the entire video is probably not even an appropriate description. So, when people are reading the comments of this submission in the future, please keep this in mind as a historical note. (This, humorously, was actually the kind of situation that caused the complaint[1] that itself turned into a massive hullabaloo recently regarding what can be discussed on HN and what the policies regarding hell-banning are; to view the reference you will need showdead.) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013

flabbergasted 14y ago
I guess the moderators were offended by a four letter word. "People who get offended should be offended!" - Linus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=3672s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA#t=3672s
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- aurelianito 14y ago
  I really agree with Linus on this one. I usually say that when one person offends other person, the one who is wrong is the offended person.
- kitsune_ 14y ago
  That was a great line by him. "I like offending people because I think people who get offended should be offended."
JoeCortopassi 14y ago
The new title completely changed what I was expecting when I clicked this link, which was much appreciated when I opened it at my in-laws with the volume on :-/. I honestly thought this was a follow up to the "Linus to Nvidia: 'F*ck You'" post for some commentary, and now feel like I just got Rick-Rolled... Edit: Seriously though, is the new rule that we aren't allowed to submit anything other than the page's title?

cnp 14y ago

ughhhh by the time you get to that fuck you part you're cheering along as well... perfect timing

wordplay 14y ago

http://youtu.be/MShbP3OpASA?t=20m50s http://youtu.be/MShbP3OpASA?t=20m50s "If you think like a computer, writing C actually makes sense."

nnq 14y ago

...anybody else picked up the line where he basically says that WEB PROGRAMMING ISN'T [REAL] PROGRAMMING? I wonder what a community like HN, with so many people developing web apps thinks about this... :) Quote (~min 11:30): "I have never in my love done any web programming because I'm not interested, I think that kind of stuff... there's MIS people to do that for you, right? I'm interested in programming" [edited some spelling bugs]

sdfjhjhjhjhd 14y ago
web programming is boring CRUD work in almost all cases.
pm90 14y ago
I hope people like him continue to say things like that. He is a systems engineer who loves what he does so of course he feels that what he does is better than everything else. That said, he also mentions that he feels bad when people take him too seriously on such things, so don't :)

zokier 14y ago

Was there anything else of interest in that talk?

duvuhq 14y ago

There is a new video only with the answer! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g

zerostar07 14y ago

I liked that he likes the open science publication movement. I think he would be a great advocate for it .

kabdib 14y ago

There is a bunch of hardware in the world that is inaccessible. I don't see this changing. Reasons include: Keeping competitors away from what you think are valuable secrets and maintaining an advantage. Keeping people away from features that, if misused, could result in chip damage. Keeping security holes secret (e.g., badly designed DMA hardware that could be exploited, if the flaws were known). Limiting access to known buggy features, or unfinished features that either don't work or that could leak damaging hints about strategic direction. You have purchased or licensed 3rd party technology that you contractually cannot divulge details of. For interoperability with other products you have embedded knowledge of them in the product, under NDA. More: It's expensive to document chips to the point that outside development can be done. Perhaps the documentation doesn't exist, at all, and would have to be reverse-engineered out of the chip design (yes, this happens). It's expensive to write drivers for multiple platforms, or even to get software into a state where it can be consumed by an outside party (just dumping a tree onto GitHub is /not/ a release). You feel that "forking" would result in a loss of control of your own product (and would dramatically increase the cost of future releases, lest you break things). You regularly rev chips and cover the changes transparently in the software layer, and this would /not/ be transparent if you released product details (thus increasing the cost of revisions). More (the slimey side): You have misappropriated technology and divulging it would be harmful to you. There are design errors or bugs verging on malfeasance that could expose you to litigation. You have lied about the product's capabilities and a release would reveal this (whereupon, litigation). Or, it's a pain in the ass, the market is significantly less than 1 percent of your total, and you have a horizontal skyscraper of engineers already behind schedule. "Good faith and being nice" doesn't pay the bills. [I have also heard, from other parts of the industry, that the company in question is hard to deal with].

joe_the_user 14y ago
Sure, Some companies have a financial incentive to effective tell the open source movement to f-- off. Sure, when they take that, they may not be being evil on a grand scale. But hey, if they are telling linux to f-- off, it seems appropriate Linus return the favor. He's just making things clear. Is there anything wrong that?

dredmorbius 14y ago

A few observations: 1. One of the highly distinctive characteristics of being a Free Software project leader is having the freedom to speak your mind. What Linus does (hacking the Linux kernel) and who pays him to do it (presently the Linux Foundation) are pretty loosely linked. The primary objective of LF is to fund Linux development, and Linus is pretty much the guy to get that done. If LF didn't pay him for it, someone else would. He can state his opionions on relevant technical matters with few if any fears of repercussions. I'm looking forward to next week's press releases from Nvidia. 2. Linus addresses what Nvidia are doing wrong at a few points, both directly and indirectly. Around 15 minutes in he talks about what Free Software provides in the way of developer freedoms: you can focus on what you are interested in and what you are good at. In Linus's case, issues such as maintaining Linux-related websites, init, QA, and Linux distributions is stuff he fundamentally doesn't care about (while other bits such as, eventually, creating a useful revision control system he does). Free Software lets you focus on your own core competencies. He also makes the point, around 35 minutes, that it's very important that people need to know how he feels about things. Including how he feels about support received from hardware vendors. More specifically, for hardware manufacturers, playing nice and closely with the kernel development community leads to both better product performance and customer relations. The woman asking the Nvidia question clearly wasn't happy with her Nvidia experience. I've learned in assessing hardware compatibility to treat any Nvidia componentry as at best a red flag if not a show-stopper. I'll actively go out of my way to avoid their products (Intel have gone out of their way to ensure compatibility and open specs, my most recent purchases centered on Intel chipsets, in particular for graphics). Playing well with devs also means that issues are addressed in a timely manner, compromises can be reached, and in general communications are open and positive. I don't know the full backstory on the Nvidia front (though searching the LKML mailing list should turn up some bits). 3. ... and yes, the HN moderators fubared this one.

jc-denton 14y ago

F you to the only GPU actually working on Linux. Probably Intel or AMD are a bit more open about the specs, but the only one actually working. I have used them both for graphics and computational stuff with CUDA. Saying Nvidia is bad because they do not publish their specs is ridiculous IMHO. If you start thinking about how some things in a modern CPU are implemented (caching mechanism for example) you will notice that about zero information is published :) They sure have an x64 front end but when it comes to how the CPU works internally things are completely different.

abruzzi 14y ago

At one point in the video he says he's proud that Linux is the only OS (I'm presuming he meant kernel) that is in mobile and desktop/server systems. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the assumption that OSX and iOS were both based on essentially the same Darwin/XNU kernel?

ellie42 14y ago

MS Vista has no drivers: "Vista sucks! Mi$roSoft sucks!" GNU/Linux has no drivers: "Fuck NVIDIA!"

wowoc 14y ago
GNU/Linux has drivers, but they are distributed as a binary blob compiled against a specific version of kernel.

dbbolton 14y ago

Does anyone know the full story behind the "suicidal" reference?

TimMontague 14y ago

This was a really interesting talk. Does anyone know where to find other lectures (or whatever this is technically called) by other influential programmers/computer scientists?

rsanchez1 14y ago

Optimus has to be one of the worst products nVidia has pushed. There's the Linux incompatibility, and there's the little problem where you are always tied to the vastly inferior integrated graphics. Games that I should be able to play at 60+ FPS with highest settings and resolution play at 20-30 FPS because I can't use the graphics card to the fullest. Then I need to do obscure hacks to get some games to even recognize the nVidia graphics card because the game developer thought it would be a great idea to wait until you downloaded and installed a 7GB game and launched it to tell you, "Oh, you're one of those Optimusers, well fuck you." Just google "sonic generations optimus" and you'll see what I mean.