> I understand that Linux has been a lesser priority for both companies, which is understandable. It's not going to make them the truckloads of money that the rest of their market segments will.
Actually, they are both theoretically very interested in the Linux market because of their GPGPUs. Windows is pretty much unheard of in scientific computing (in November it powered a whopping 2 of the 500 comuters in top500). AMD does offer a good range of development tools for their CPUs; I haven't worked on their GPUs, but I've heard nothing but complaints about it.
> NVidia is probably not targeting top500, so is focusing on the 99% of market.
Nvidia definitely targets the Top 500 and is currently (Nov 2013) providing the GPUs for #2 and #6 in the Top 10 of the list and dozens more lower down the list. There's a lot of money in supercomputers, in the Top 500 scale and smaller installations too.
NVIDIA is focusing on the movie industry, where SGI workstations and rendering servers have largely been replaced by Linux boxen with NVIDIA graphics kit inside. That's probably been the biggest driver of NVIDIA's Linux support not completely sucking these past few years.
Actually, they are both theoretically very interested in the Linux market because of their GPGPUs. Windows is pretty much unheard of in scientific computing (in November it powered a whopping 2 of the 500 comuters in top500). AMD does offer a good range of development tools for their CPUs; I haven't worked on their GPUs, but I've heard nothing but complaints about it.