Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonethewiser | Hacker News Reader

>Wtf. Are we actually seeing a push towards being 100percent dependent on the cloud?

This is a linux driver problem. On laptops designed for windows.

Read the article and stop sensationalizing.

This is a problem on the MSI Prestige laptop using the RTX Spark platform and Linux. Lets assume it also applies to the Asus and Dell machines using RTX spark and Linux.

RTX Spark is a new platform and all of these laptops ship with Windows. You cant get Linux on any of these machines from the factory. NVIDIA may even ship drivers for linux later as they did with Dynamic Boost.

Kindly remove this from your list of "Evidence that NVIDIA is Colluding to Centralize Inference" and everyone else take note of this confirmation bias in action.

View on HN

I dunno about colluding to centralize inference, but "we encrypted the power firmware and only gave microsoft the keys" certainly reads as colluding to keep people on windows artificially

Nvidia probably encrypts firmware to protect IP rather than to block Linux users; maintaining open drivers across platforms is expensive, and they’ve historically prioritized Linux for datacenter

Protecting IP is an excuse given for all manner of computer-aided fuckery, certainly

Power per compute is ludicrously important to data centers. This isn't some small IP, it's a potential market differentiator.

edit: even more important for mobile computers

Yes, it seems a lot of companies can make a lot of money from fuckery like controlling what their customers can do with the devices they sell and deliberately sabotaging those devices for some customers via this control. What's your point? Am I supposed to support any practice a company can find a way to make money off of? Generally speaking I'm more against fuckery that's profitable for a company than fuckery that isn't, because the latter is at least likely to stop naturally

> What's your point?

That them trying to protect IP around something very profitable isn't crazy. That not being fully supported in Linux, when the product was literally designed around Windows, also isn't crazy or really evidence of anything, including evil (see the whole fucking history of Linux compatibility of made-for-Windows hardware).

Maybe let them cook.

In general, the history of linux compatibility for nvidia specifically has been the research and open-source communities dragging them kicking and screaming into compliance while they do significant work to prevent compatibility via fuckery. I've been doing work impacted by this continuously since before GPGPU programming became popular. I'm not a beneficiary of nvidia's deals with microsoft or their stock price in general, so I see no reason I should "let them cook"

This kind of thing is far better at locking down the average user than preventing competitors from reverse engineering what they're doing. (much like DRM is pretty good at stopping your average consumer from doing what they want with their media but pretty bad at stopping the pirates getting access to the same content).

not being able to read something which is encrypted is not a driver problem. do u expect the driver to crack the encryption? or guess the key?

nvidia has always been crap like this. Look at amd and intel, they let u write proper drivers (even if its real difficult to do so). No encrypted blobs or voodoo needed.

the nvidia drivers u need to use a card on Linux are unintelligible binary blobs. thats sad as it is. this is worse. they might give some shitty blobs at some point, after they made enough ppl give up on it and switch to give them and their partners their money, souls and firstborn

> This is a linux driver problem. On laptops designed for windows.

No. It's 'the NVidia way or the highway' problem. NVidia is so full of themselves they refuse to work under anyone's rules (i.e. the Linux kernel where they're constantly trying to work around them).

They're egomaniacs who are so full of themselves, riding high on the AI bubble, they think they're above everyone else in the ecosystem, while utilising all kinds of other people's work for their own benefit.

Look at the way they develop their 'open' Linux drivers where it's just a shim that loads a huge binary blob off the GPU rather than a proper driver like amdgpu has.

Meanwhile they wouldn't be a $5T company without Linux and the wider FLOSS ecosystem.

It's kind of like when Secure Boot debuted and the plan was to allow only Windows with it enabled, then no doubt someone would claim the fact that only Windows can boot with it enabled as a 'Linux driver problem'.

Where do you see "sensationalizing"? His analysis is very right: these companies prioritize windows over linux. That's a factual statement. Same with the collusion. This is a de-facto cartel.

> This is a problem on the MSI Prestige laptop using the RTX Spark platform and Linux. Lets assume it also applies to the Asus and Dell machines using RTX spark and Linux.

Is the problem one that could be easily countered by assuming that laptops are generally better when they're not on fire?

To be fair the headline is egregiously sensationalist.

> This is a linux driver problem.

Claude, make a driver that runs at full capacity on my laptop. (make no mistakes).

To be honest, your comment is a perfect demonstration of how big corporations control public opinion by instrumentalizing people like you. Unless, of course, you work for NVIDIA.

How dare they not be outraged!!

NVIDIA spends tens of kindly billions to *not* give their own kindly products kindly pride of kindly place

Reply on news.ycombinator.com