I have to reinstall Windows on the kids' computer sometime soon. It's running slow as hell, is very bogged down, and generally suffers from 'been installed too long' disease.
And I'm not looking forward to it. Since it's a home build, I don't have a handy OEM disk. So when i install Windows, there will be no motherboard drivers, no graphics drivers, the internet won't work (wireless), my browser of choice (firefox) won't be installed, and there will be no useful software available. And the support? Hopeless. If they would use Ubuntu, I could just pop in the disk and leave it for 20 mins, and everything would work out of the box (except those nasty closed source graphics drivers!). But they like windows, and they choose to use lots of programs and games that are windows only. Their computer, their choice.
But I'm in danger of dragging this topic off the rails.
So back to the point, WHY would Nvidia or ATI install malware infected drivers? What would be in it for them? Sony installed their rootkit as a way of cracking down on piracy. And it backfired. VERY badly for them. Despite publically apologising, replacing the cds and removing the rootkit installing stuff from their cds, many many people have sworn never to buy their cds again. And this is cds, that cost $10-$20. When you buy a graphics card, you tend to spend a lot more than that. And it's in the vendors interest to want you to buy from them again. Including malware with their drivers would be suicide. They don't keep their drivers closed source so they can slip in nasties, they do it to stop the competition seeing what they do with their drivers, so neither company can get the upper hand. Or thats how I see it at least.
If you don't want closed source, don't buy from a vendor who only supplies closed source drivers. If you don't want closed source drivers, uninstall them. If you don't like a distro that has closed source binaries included, use another distro.
Alternatively, get one of THESE. Not sure if they're covered under GPL tho'.
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