4 ms·

Uh, NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago. Within that ecosystem, Ubuntu is too big to ignore.

by paol 16y ago

levesque 16y ago
NVIDIA kind of supports Linux as a family of distro. There is only one driver for ALL the Linux distros out there, which is nice, keeps things simple for them. If they need to wrap out a second series of drivers just for Ubuntu and Wayland, I'm not sure it's going to be quality material. Anyway, anything would be better than the current NVIDIA drivers, which are crappy as hell in my book. Now is this because X is also crappy, I can't tell.
sielskr 16y ago
"NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago." NVIDIA is not legally obligated to support Linux; are they?
- forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
  "NVIDIA is not legally obligated to support Linux; are they?" Yes, I think they are because of contracts with big guys that need Linux on things like supercomputers(almost all of them have linux inside).
  - azim 16y ago
    Interestingly enough, a lot of developers argue that Nvidia and ATI are in violation of of the GPL by releasing proprietary drivers for Linux. The language is unclear on whether or not the kernel's GPL license extends to kernel loadable modules or not, many say it does.
sedachv 16y ago
"As NVIDIA did not release all the needed documentation for its graphics chip, the development is under the nouveau project which uses reverse engineering to get it to work. Nouveau has been pulled to 2.6.33 kernel. This will allow to use kernel-based mode-setting for NVIDIA cards with this driver." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode-setting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode-setting That's some heavy commitment to support Linux right there.
wtracy 16y ago
They support Linux because of the graphics companies that use Linux. They're all on RHEL, not Ubuntu.

4 ms·

Uh, NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago. Within that ecosystem, Ubuntu is too big to ignore.

by paol 16y ago

Uh, NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago. Within that ecosystem, Ubuntu is too big to ignore.

levesque 16y ago
NVIDIA kind of supports Linux as a family of distro. There is only one driver for ALL the Linux distros out there, which is nice, keeps things simple for them. If they need to wrap out a second series of drivers just for Ubuntu and Wayland, I'm not sure it's going to be quality material. Anyway, anything would be better than the current NVIDIA drivers, which are crappy as hell in my book. Now is this because X is also crappy, I can't tell.
sielskr 16y ago
"NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago." NVIDIA is not legally obligated to support Linux; are they?
- forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
  "NVIDIA is not legally obligated to support Linux; are they?" Yes, I think they are because of contracts with big guys that need Linux on things like supercomputers(almost all of them have linux inside).
  - azim 16y ago
    Interestingly enough, a lot of developers argue that Nvidia and ATI are in violation of of the GPL by releasing proprietary drivers for Linux. The language is unclear on whether or not the kernel's GPL license extends to kernel loadable modules or not, many say it does.
sedachv 16y ago
"As NVIDIA did not release all the needed documentation for its graphics chip, the development is under the nouveau project which uses reverse engineering to get it to work. Nouveau has been pulled to 2.6.33 kernel. This will allow to use kernel-based mode-setting for NVIDIA cards with this driver." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode-setting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode-setting That's some heavy commitment to support Linux right there.
wtracy 16y ago
They support Linux because of the graphics companies that use Linux. They're all on RHEL, not Ubuntu.