Eh, forked the graphics subsystem? They are running X with a modified XCompmgr as compositor, the latter has been around for ages and was likely chosen because it runs on anything that can run X.

There's no 'fiefdom of incompability' here.

Bullshit, none of those listed has a stable ABI, for example the windows driver ABI changed from XP to XP64 and of course Vista and forwards, with a crapload of drivers no longer functioning as a result (the 'compability mode' sucks in general but even more so for drivers).

And since you don't have the source code to Windows drivers (99% chance they are proprietary) and the hardware vendors want you to buy new hardware instead of using your old they see this as a great excuse to drop support (cue the Vista driver fiasco), a ton of fully functioning older hardware was effectively deprecated when users moved from XP to Vista/Windows 7.

Windows gets support for all new hardware from vendors due to it's desktop monopoly, what has a more stable ABI benefited OSX, Solaris, OS/2 in terms of driver support? None of them has near the driver support Linux enjoys.

Beyond those two GPU drivers I never even have too, practically everything else is supported out-of-the box. Meanwhile those proprietary drivers are just a package manager command away, and automagically updated when I update the rest of the system. So I don't need no driver from 2008, thanks anyways.

Are you high? Are you equaling two discrete GPU drivers with 'any working drivers AT ALL' ?

Furthermore you seem to think that the proprietary vendors have to rewrite their entire drivers when the ABI changes, typically they need to make some changes to their shim code.

It is PRACTICAL, as a proprietary driver is nothing but a black box which means it can't be fixed, debugged nor vetted against security issues, and then we have the fact that open source drivers can then be supported on all architectures where Linux runs (which is basically EVERYTHING), and not just the architectures which the proprietary vendor sees fit to support.

So yes it is by DESIGN. It is designed to be difficult (or at least not easy) to develop proprietary drivers against the kernel as it gives nothing but problems (again PRACTICAL) to the kernel developers and they want to make it clear that they don't want to support proprietary out-of-tree drivers.

And this 'hard stance' has delivered in droves as Linux has a staggering amount of hardware support out of the box, nothing else comes close, the only real holdouts these days are those discrete GPL vendors like NVIDIA and to a lesser extent AMD, meanwhile both NVIdia and AMD has recently started/increased their commitment to provide documentation for open source drivers, so things are moving in the right direction here aswell.

This in turn also helps the entire open source ecosystem, as open source drivers can be ported to other systems aswell, systems which would never see an official proprietary driver.

And finally it just makes sense, why the f*** should I be prevented from using the HARDWARE I BUY in the operating system of my choosing just because the hardware vendor doesn't find it worthy of support?

You can keep your proprietary-friendly, more stable driver ABI. I'll take open and thus: debuggable, improvable, security-examinable drivers (heck, entire system actually) and the largest-by-far hardware support out-of-the-box.

And you know what, if you want to run the proprietary NVidia or AMD offering YOU CAN, the NVidia driver is well supported on Linux DESPITE how near impossible it is according to you. Which of course is nonsense, it's just a question of customer demand and for Linux the GPU demand is due to it being dominant in HPC and also very strong in the 3D special effects / Animated Movie industry. If it wasn't then we wouldn't have seen any official NVidia support to begin with, no matter if the ABI was stable or not.

Lol, are you for real? Long term? Have you been asleep for the last decade or so? There's a world outside the PC desktop you know, which incidentally is rapidly shrinking and is typically being replaced by devices which run almost entirely on *nix and where Linux is used in the most popular one.

I think it's time for YOU to retire Hairyfeet, you've been shouting this 'same ole song' of how Linux is going nowhere for as long as I can remember, and reality keeps throwing you punches.

Heck we're even seeing games support picking up on the Linux desktop, which was the thing I never expected to happen, with Steam and SteamOS potentially leading the way for AAA ports.

But just keep on crying about how that ghastly non-stable ABI is ruining Linux chances in the world, despite the fact that the two proprietary GPU vendor holdouts actually ARE supporting Linux, which totally renders your statement worthless.

Ehh, what 'big settlement' did Google pay? Google and MPEG LA announced an agreement, there's been no disclosure of any big settlement, and I seriously doubt there was one.

MPEG LA was actively looking (as in advertising for) any patents which could be used as a patent pool against VP8, and had they actually managed to create a strong portfolio then I don't think we'd ever seen this agreement take place. Also, given how long On2 (the company Google bought for their codec technology) have been active in video compression aswell as the patents they hold, it's not as if Google is just entering the video compression arena from scratch, and they may very well hold patents on which h264 and h265 could be found infringing.

And as far as licencing costs, there's no indemnification from patent trolls with MPEG LA licencing either, and MPEG LA's saber rattling turned out to be just that, no 'massive liabilities' ended up facing anyone.

This notion you try to sell that you would somehow be 'safe' with MPEG LA licencing, while opening yourself up to 'massive liabilities' if you use VP8/VP9 is just typical scare tactics as I see it.

Now I don't think VP9 will be quite as good as h265, but that's not really important. The important thing is that MPEG LA won't be able to corner the entire online video compression market, and that there is an actual competitive alternative (and that this competition is also open source and royalty free is a huge bonus).

Because the day there isn't, the companies who make up MPEG LA will start to collect heavily on their investments, massive-greed style. Which in turn will affect us end users as the increased cost will inevitably be shifted unto us, one way or another.

Furthermore it will lead to stagnation, as in: 'we will bleed this technology dry before we introduce the next generation', all in an effort to maximize profit with less effort.

So yay for VP9, may it (and it's later incarnations) live long and prosper.

Well there's a difference between people _choosing_ to use services like Google, GMail et al, and having your privacy 'invaded' by a drone to which you have not agreed in any way. As for 'readily divulge information without notifying', are they even allowed to? They certainly aren't allowed to say 'no' to that request, and AFAIK Google is the only organisation which actually lists information regarding these 'user data' requests from the government.

But couldn't it just be that github is a massive dumping ground for anything code-like, from the tiniest snippets to dot files, stuff which few thinks warrant a licence.

I have nothing against permissive licences, nor proprietary code unless it tries to lock-in users through proprietary file-formats. However your complaints about having to replicate functionality is what GPL actually prevents in terms of open source. You have to replicate the functionality because you want to keep your code proprietary, anyone who wants to create a similar type of program as yours will have to replicate the functionality you have written. So while you decry having to rewrite GPL licenced functionality you clearly have no problem with others having to replicate your proprietary code.

When it comes to games, certainly, but not so when it comes to 3d applications, atleast not 3d content creation applications where OpenGL is king and directx is seldom used. Maya, XSI, Modo, Houdini, Lightwave, Mudbox, Blender, and more only support OpenGL, the only ones I can think of which supports DirectX are Autocad (directx only), 3ds Max (directx, opengl) and 3d Coat (directx, opengl).