Linus Torvalds, the driving force behind the Linux kernel, used a recent question and answer session hosted at the end of a speech at the Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship in Otaniemi, Finland to air his thoughts on Nvidia and its lack of Linux GPU driver support, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Update: Nvidia has responded to Linus' complaints over graphics support in Linux.
While taking questions from the audience, around the 48-minute mark in the video below, a woman explained the problems she had getting her laptop's Nvidia Optimus GPU to correctly work under Linux. "I was expecting that Nvidia would kind of chip in and do something [but] they said flat out 'no' they're not doing any support."
Asked what his thoughts on the matter were, Torvalds responded: "Nvidia has been one of the worst trouble spots we've had with hardware manufacturers. And that's really sad because Nvidia tries to sell a lot of chips into the Android market. And Nvidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with."
However, Torvalds – who has a history of speaking his mind – didn't stop at that. "So, Nvidia, f*** you," he stated whilst gesturing with his middle finger to the camera, much to the applause of the audience. "I think it's really sad when you sell hardware and use Linux and you are being really difficult about it. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that other companies are perfect either."
His point is in reference to Nvidia's Tegra line, which runs on the Linux-based Android OS. Nvidia announced back in March that it would begin open-source support for Linux, but Torvalds' comments on Thursday would suggest things have improved little despite the public commitment to changing the situation.
Prior to this, the company had been so unwilling to provide assistance that the Linux community reverse-engineering its GPU drivers to provide an open source alternative that was less buggy for users of the OS.