It may be true that when it comes to Linux, NVIDIA has a little trouble opening-up, however, when it comes to partners and financial incentives, the firm magically transforms into a great team-worker.
A great example of this teamwork has been demonstrated by Valve as the firm continues to port its Steam platform and Left 4 Dead 2 game over to Ubuntu Linux. When the firm first began its port, armed with a GeForce GTX680, it was able to achieve a meager 6fps in Ubuntu, against the 270fps of Windows 7 in DirectX.
Since then, Valve has optimised the Steam engine for OpenGL and, in Windows, L4D2 is now running faster than its DirectX counter-part at 305fps, proving that OpenGL is no longer under-optimised in the drivers. OpenGL, however, has to jump through a few hoops in Windows, with these overheads affecting performance. Perhaps then, it's no surprise that Valve, working closely with NVIDIA, in the space of a few months has managed to achieve frame rates of 315fps, when running L4D2 on Ubuntu 32-bit.
Again, perhaps no surprise, however, certainly a revelation. A revelation that with enough effort when porting and, with backing from NVIDIA, AMD and co. Linux could become the gaming platform of the future as something free, open-source, highly-optimised and portable, it would be possible for hardware and console designers to take a distribution off-the-shelf or build-up from the kernel to a high-performance solution, for the lowest cost in the least time. Quite a thought.
