Linus Torvalds, the man behind Linux, has used a forum hosted by Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship in Otaniemi, Finland to vent his frustration with Nvidia. As the clip embedded below highlights, Torvalds was responding to a question from a woman in the audience about the technical trouble she was experiencing trying to run Linux using a notebook with an Nvida GPU.
“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,” she said.
The situation hit a nerve and Torvalds could barely contain his frustration and annoyance with Nvidia. Torvalds criticized Nvidia for pushing support for the Limux-based Android OS purely for commercial reasons, but doing nothing for the open-source Linux community because it does not see the commercial viability in doing so.
“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 chips, a lot of chips into the Android market. And Nvidia has been the single worst company we’ve ever dealt with,” he said.
You will need to fast forward to around the 49 min mark to see Torvalds let the world know what he really thinks about Nvidia. “So, Nvidia, f*** you,” he said looking directly at the camera while also offering the hardware maker the ‘bird.’ He also added that, “I think it’s really sad when you sell hardware and use Linux and you are being really difficult about it.”
Nvidia has chosen to stay clear of entering into the debate and offered no comment on the matter.
