Addressing a forum hosted by Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship in Otaniemi, Finland, on June 14, Torvalds - the key architect of the Linux Kernel - gave Nvidia the finger over its lack of Linux support.

A recently-released YouTube video shows Torvalds responding quite passionately when a woman student developer came up with a question about Nvidia driver support for Linux on her notebook.

With the woman saying that her attempts to get Linux working on a laptop which was equipped with Nvidia's Optimus chip turned out to be futile as she was told there was no Linux support for the device, Torvalds immediately railed on Nvidia for its below-par support of the Linux operating system.

In reaction to the woman student's question, Torvalds said that Nvidia has been one of "the worst trouble spots" which Linux has ever had with hardware manufacturers. Describing Nvidia as the single worst company that the Linux platform has had to deal with, Torvalds said that the lack of Linux support on Nvidia-chip-equipped devices was "really sad" because Nvidia apparently tries to sell a number of chips into the Android market.

Further hitting out against Nvidia, Torvalds said that "it's really sad when you sell hardware and use Linux and you are being really difficult about it"; and, gesturing with his middle finger, added: "So, Nvidia, f*** you"!