So in short, the deal is, you get the card, but the only way to use it is to rent a driver to which you have an incomplete access, thereby making your fruitful use of the card consistently dependent on Nvidia and, quite obviously, therefore limiting the control you as a supposed owner of the card really have over it.

My response to many negative comments about Linux drivers:

Let’s just think for a minute why 90% or so of computer users use Windows… It comes on their PC’s. And of those 90% I’d say 85% or more don’t know there’s an alternative. They blindly struggle and curse their way through Vista and all of it’s pitfalls. If you bought a PC that came with Linux pre-installed and that was your one option, you’d be a Linux user. Many of us choose to seek out other options because we grew tired of having to pay for nearly EVERYTHING on a Windows machine. With the whole Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Malware thing is it puts a sizable dent in your wallet to have to pay subscription and or licensing fees every year on several PC’s and guess what… they still don’t work most of the time and you eventually have to wipe you system and reinstall Windows!!! UGH!!! Sound familiar?

The whole open driver debate is more about keeping the product alive for many years to come and supporting the open source community because they give back to the community. It’s like having thousands of developers and programmers do the work for you for FREE!!! By allowing people to develop their own drivers, they basically guarantee their products survival. Just look at Linksys with the WRT54G or the Linksys NSLU2. They will always have the hardware to sell and profit on. And they can rely on the masses of Windows users who don’t know how to compile a driver from source, much less write one, to use the one they provide them. We’ll see how bad it hurts AMD/ATI my guess is it won’t, not one bit.

I was always an Nvidia fan but am now rethinking that position. I support companies that support Linux, it’s that simple. I also own nearly a dozen computers so when I vote with my wallet it has more of an impact that someone that buys a single new PC once every 4 to 5 years as I’m sure many of the Windows users do.

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