. That's what I would expect from proprietary companies and their fans. They always have to resort to tyranny and screw up someone, one way or another. And that's one of reasons why I dislike propritary approach.
Reply With QuoteBullshit. Linus was spot on: Preinstalled.Originally Posted by johnc
IMO every computer should be sold with a free OS preinstalled by default, and any commercial alternative (ie Windows) be optional by adding the license fee (microsoft tax); not the other way around.
What had fanatics to do with anything? The GPL only affects you if you want to do modifications and then publicly redistribute said modifications without disclosing them. There is also lgpl and freebsd style licenses. Many corporations have no problem working with these, and there was a time were every hardware component had their whole technical manual available without stupid clauses, that is exactly what we need. The likes of nvidia are thankfully a minority.
While Android is like 20% free 80% proprietary, Ubuntu is more like 90% free, while MacOSX is the opposite with like 10% free. If "fanatics" were such a nuisance, why bother with free components at all? Where is Copland OS? Free software is used by merits of quality and reliability vs the closed model.
There is also people like Shuttleworth working to bring linux to the masses, not only focusing in a user oriented distro, but also dealing to have the OS come preinstalled in computers, or stand alone devices like TVs or even cellphones.
The advantage of working open is a benefit, not a hindrance; but it takes time and effort to convince some corporate managerial types who are more used to secrecy and isolation (leading to bugs, security holes, etc). There is a whole school of tough about compete vs cooperate, which causes a never ending "re-invent the wheel" situation because the other guy won't or can't share. Humanity wouldn't have progressed without people copying and/or building upon the works of others.
Nvidia needed for a mainstream desktop?... Maybe only if you are a gamer, anything else can already be done with other brands or even nouveau. This might be because the community has been slow with AMD/ATI, or some issues with few undocumented features there. Intel has traditionally fared better in that camp (with few exceptions), there also used to be others, the most promising bough by nvidia and sold for parts (3dfx).
Perhaps someday the Chinese will come with a clone gpu architecture to rid us of this mess or at least open another path, same way they did their mipsel (loongsoon) cpu, they might take something, add a few changes, document it and mass produce it to break nvidia's position once for all.
