Linus Torvalds, the guy behind Linux, has had a change of heart regarding partnership with Nvidia. Last year he labelled the GPU giant as the "single worst company" that the Linux kernal has ever worked with. Now Nvidia have pledged to help improve the "out-of-the-box compatibility" by the use of open source drivers.

An email was sent to the developers of Nouveau, the open source driver which is used for Nvidia's GPU support. This email was sent by Nvidia's Andy Ritger, showing their support:

"Nvidia is releasing public documentation on certain aspects of our GPUs, with the intent to address areas that impact the out-of-the-box usability of Nvidia GPUs with Nouveau. We intend to provide more documentation over time, and guidance in additional areas as we are able."

So Nvidia is now waiting on feedback from the Nouveau community. The feedback has been more useful than Ritger expected. Linus Torvalds said this about the partnership:

"I'm cautiously optimistic that this is a real shift in how Nvidia perceives Linux. The actual docs released so far are fairly limited, and in themselves they wouldn't be a big thing, but if Nvidia really does follow up and start opening up more, that would certainly be great. They've already been much better in the ARM SoC space than they were on the more traditional GPU side, and I really hope that someday I can just apologize for ever giving them the finger."

So it seems that the rift is healing between Nvida and the Linux community. This could be good news, especially with the new SteamOS. Let us know below what you think of this partnership.