> nvidia can pull that off with linux because pushover operating systems like BSD give them the leverage to make those sorts of demands of the linux ecosystem

> nvidia can pull that off with linux because pushover operating systems like BSD give them the leverage to make those sorts of demands of the linux ecosystem That is quite the assertion given that FreeBSD is much smaller than linux, which is already much smaller than windows. Honestly kind of laughable, FreeBSD is so small and insignificant, it's just an afterthought of an afterthought for companies, the only reason those drivers exist is because it's a minimal amount of extra work for them since they already have the linux drivers. It would take a massive amount of work and nurturing to create a FreeBSD community large enough for it to become a palatable option for most linux users. Not to mention FreeBSD doesn't even have CUDA support, so nvidia themselves would have to do extra work to make it happen (probably other features too, that's just the main one that bit me). As for shims, linux already breaks them all the time, that's why everyone hates nvidia on linux. But that doesn't stop nvidia from doing it. > If there were no feasible permissive competitors to linux, then linux developers would be quite free to make demands of companies who would be forced to comply with the GPL or write their own OS from scratch. nvidia is already complying with the GPL. And no, if they wanted to skip shims they wouldn't be forced to write their own OS, they would just force their users to use windows. This comparison makes no sense.