I’m sorry but this is inaccurate. NVIDIA has been quite involved in Linux (and even UNIX) for a long time, but more on the professional rendering and compute side, as opposed to gaming.
Example, from 2004: Sun Microsystems and NVIDIA Form Professional Graphics Alliance | Animation World Network
Example, from 2026: Red Hat Expands Collaboration with NVIDIA to Pair Enterprise Open Source with Rack-Scale AI for Faster, Production-Ready Innovation
The story behind this case is also quite interesting, and somewhat related, which I would recommend you to read: Inside Nvidia's 10-year effort to make the Shield TV the most updated Android device ever - Ars Technica
It’s also interesting how NVIDIA is the only GPU vendor with more optimized Blender rendering performance on Linux than on Windows:
| Device Name | OS | Median Score |
|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 | Linux | 6112 |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 | Windows | 5754 |
| Intel Arc Pro B70 Graphics | Windows | 3868 |
| Intel Arc Pro B70 Graphics | Linux | 3647 |
| AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT | Windows | 3392 |
| AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT | Linux | 3238 |
True, they used to not play nice with some open source efforts and standards in the past, as we all know well.
But that is not the topic of this thread.
The topic here is to document the observation that they’ve in fact noticeably increased their involvement in Linux gaming, and to speculate on why this may be the case (as this is contrary to popular assumptions/past behaviour.) Hoping to promote an informative, quality discussion that contributes knowledge, as opposed to the usual Internet-arguments.