8 months ago
Linus Torvalds Calls NVIDIA the Worst Company
A long time ago, in 2012, the boss of Linux, Linus Torvalds, said that NVIDIA was the worst company he had ever worked with.
He was upset because NVIDIA did not support Linux very well, which made it hard for Linux users.
NVIDIA later said they were trying to support Linux, but in their own way.
Now, NVIDIA is a very big and successful company, even becoming the first to reach a $5 trillion market value in 2025.
But back then, they had some problems with Linux.
Linus Torvalds called NVIDIA the worst company he had ever dealt with in 2012.
He criticized NVIDIA for poor hardware support for Linux.
NVIDIA responded by stating they support Linux on their GPUs using common code.
NVIDIA has since become a leading chipmaker and reached a $5 trillion market value in 2025.
Torvalds' comments resurfaced in a recent video.
- Who
- Linus Torvalds (Linux CEO) and NVIDIA
- What
- Linus Torvalds called NVIDIA the worst company he had ever dealt with
- Where
- Public Q&A session
- When
- 2012, with a resurfaced video in the present
- Why
- Due to NVIDIA's poor hardware support for Linux
Key facts
- Person Involved
- Linus Torvalds (Linux CEO)
- Company Involved
- NVIDIA
- Year of Incident
- 2012
- NVIDIA's Response
- Support for Linux on GPUs, leveraging common code
- NVIDIA's Current Status
- Leading chipmaker, $5 trillion market value in 2025
Quotes
Nvidia
Tech company specializing in GPU manufacturing
“Recently, there have been some questions raised about our lack of support for our Optimus notebook technology. When we launched [Optimus], it was with support for Windows 7 only.”
livemint.com
“While we understand that some people would prefer us to provide detailed documentation on all of our GPU internals, or be more active in Linux kernel community development discussions, we have made a decision to support Linux on our GPUs by leveraging Nvidia common code, rather than the Linux common infrastructure.”
livemint.com
Linus Torvalds
CEO of Linux
“Nvidia has been one of the worst trouble spots we’ve had with hardware manufacture and that is really sad because Nvidia tries sell chips, a lot of chips into the Android market and Nvidia has been the single worst company we’ve ever dealt with.”
livemint.com
