OSNews > Thread > "RE[3]: Just one more example" by Wrawrat

NVIDIA: WinCE Better for ARM Netbooks than Android, Linux

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 18th Jun 2009 21:52 UTC

Currently, there's a lot of hype around Android on ARM-based netbooks, a type of netbook arriving later this year. However, despite the obvious choice for Android and other Linux systems, NVIDIA has openly stated their preference for... Windows CE. ARM and Asus are also quite sceptical about Android on ARM netbooks.

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RE[3]: Just one more example

by Wrawrat on Fri 19th Jun 2009 21:33 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Just one more example"

Member since:
2005-06-30

...sometimes being pragmatic is also looking at long term effects. NVIDIA isn't evil, they just don't care about FOSS. When you do care about FOSS, you'd see that NVIDIA isn't advancing the platform. At best they are dead weight. At worst they are slowing progress in free and open graphics, because their closed drivers diminish the pool of users who use free drivers and therefore there is less of a population to push the open solutions forward.

Perhaps that's not a bad idea, because pushing immature solutions would only frustrate people...

In light of recent developments, NVIDIA only supports Linux nominally by glueing Windows drivers on top of the Linux kernel. This does nothing to support long term Linux/X.org development. That is why my recent purchases are ATI based cards. Even if the whole Linux/X.org and ATI drivers thing is in heavy flux right now and 3D is virtually non-existent, I know when things calm down, I'll be better off with my open infrastructure.

You're absolutely right. The keyword is when. Like I mentioned previously, the current infrastructure doesn't support OpenGL 2.0, let alone 3.0. It might be supported tomorrow, like it could be supported in three years. If you're happy with virtually "non-existent 3D", that's cool. Obviously, that's not my case.

Getting back on topic, I wonder why some fanatics claim that nVidia don't give a flying duck about Linux when they are providing a driver that is quite usable for (some? many? most?) users. If they really didn't cared about it, there would be no driver at all.

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