Linux Foundation Welcomes Nvidia, 3 Other New Members

In a brief statement, Nvidia said that its membership in the Linux Foundation will enable it to collaborate better with "the organizations and individuals instrumental in shaping the future of Linux, enabling a great experience for users and developers of Linux."

There is quite a bit of room for speculation in this statement, but I would go as far as saying that Nvidia may not have made this move with open-source Linux drivers for its graphics chips in mind. While the company offers a proprietary driver, several hardware vendors and several distributions bundle the open source Nouveau driver, which is developed via reverse engineering efforts. It would be too early to get excited about Nvidia joining the open source effort just yet.

However, the additional Linux activity is in line with previous announcements that the upcoming Kepler GPU is expected to have a strong impact in high-performance computing, including supercomputing. The supercomputing community expects from Nvidia greater flexibility to use their graphics chips, which includes access drivers and also more general ecosystem support within the Linux community.

  • jdog2pt0
    Douglas PerryNvidia may not have made this move with open-source Linux drivers for its graphics chips in mind.
    Damn
    Reply
  • knowom
    Who knows what they have in mind, but I really think Nvidia should design some kind of game console OS pairing ARM, Linux, x86, and Nvidia together for the best of all worlds. Integrate a ARM co-processor on there GPU's that can run ARM based apps and offload certain tasks and uses standard x86 cpu for normal apps with a custom slim and optimized Nvidia GPU accelerated Linux OS.

    Nvidia is a diverse and innovative company so it'll be interesting to see what this Linux thing means and turns into, but here's hoping for the best they certainly have good clout with game developers anyway.
    Reply
  • amdfangirl
    More likely than not Nvidia just wants better Tegra drivers.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    This indicates that Linux is still viable for many uses and users. This is a good thing!
    Reply
  • These are great news but until they support their Optimus technology on Linux (no Bumblebee, thanks), I'll never buy again a laptop using a nVidia graphics card.

    From an angry (ex)-nVidia customer.
    Reply
  • eddieroolz
    I did not think of the high-performance computing aspect. A lot of servers and scientific machines run Linux, so if NVidia can help with efforts in this field it may help NVidia cement its position as the premier source for hardware.
    Reply
  • kajabla
    Don't feel like googling
    Reply
  • f-14
    Nvidia did some research on why cloud computing/gaming is going to kill off their sales finally?
    the cloud, so dependable, the i cloud, the megaupload cloud....ya love the cloud esp when it's crap or shut down or your internet is out or restricted to dialup. such a wonderful cloud!
    kind of funny how the cloud resembles more of a sheep pen complete with shepherds and sheep dogs.
    Reply