Nvidia doesn't need an OS. They sell hardware, and their hardware receives driver support on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and previously, MacOS. If you built and documented an OS for AI-based tasks, Nvidia would probably be the first OEM to merge hardware support.

Linus' comment towards Nvidia was not made from the perspective of a business, either. He was lamenting that their drivers are nonfree and that their desktop support was lazy. Neither of those things matter to 99% of businesses that are using Nvidia hardware for AI compute. Also, both aren't strictly true anymore in 2025 as Nvidia officially supports Wayland now and technically has "Open" drivers.