Vlad Savov for The Verge:

Linus Torvalds isn’t someone you’d accuse of excessive diplomacy and his answer to a question about Nvidia’s lack of support for Linux with its Optimus technology has been far from compromising. When posed with that query during a Q&A session at Aalto University in Finland, Torvalds begins by identifying Nvidia as “the single worst company we’ve ever dealt with” and goes on to give his assessment of its actions with a resolute “fuck you” and an accompanying middle finger gesture to the camera.

Nvidia’s Optimus is power-saving technology designed to enable the computer to swap between the GPU and integrated graphics on the motherboard. At least part of Torvalds’ frustration may be that Nvidia is now a member of The Linux Foundation, ostensibly to better support its technology in Linux. Yet Optimus technology only works partially, thanks to reverse-engineered drivers developed by the community itself. Nvidia has been AWOL.

Nvidia rival AMD provides open source support for its own GPU-switching technology.

Such power-saving tech has been a cornerstone of Mac (and Windows) hardware and software for a while now. Torvalds’ frustration is understandable under the circumstances, but either way, it’s one less problem we OS X users have to deal with.