Linux represents less than 2% of desktops, why bother?
1.5 pct of 1 billion personal computers are still 15 million Linux desktops.
And most of them aren't kids, housewives or hobbyists. Most Linux desktop users are engineers.
Why do industrial grade EDA software have native Linux versions?
All true but how many are potential NVIDIA customers who absolutely need bleeding edge performance? It's going to be a small percentage of those 15 million Linux desktops. Gamers are more likely to need performance than engineers. Sure, the engineers want bleeding edge tech but do they really need it? Yes, some do. Most don't. I don't follow the game market but around here they seem to be based on Steam and Steam doesn't fully support Linux. Some games work, some don't.
Remember, in this dance there are two parties. Linux refuses to cooperate with closed source and NVIDIA refuses to open up their IP. Neither are wrong! I went through the NVIDIA song and dance quite a few years ago with Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a Dell machine. Dell configured the system and it all worked well until I made the mistake of upgrading the kernel. The right answer would have been to stay at the level it had and ignore the updates. It was a total nightmare and the kernel updates were frequent.
This same conversation occurs a couple of times per year and the solution is simple: If you want to run Linux, buy AMD graphics cards and avoid NVIDIA. After all these years it is a pretty good bet that NVIDIA isn't going to suddenly change to open source. They must think their position is correct for their business segment or they would have changed it a long time back. They're still in business so it must be working out for them.
As to engineering, yes, Linux is an ideal platform. I use it a lot when I write code that is built with Makefiles. It just seems easier to do that with a terminal and the toolkit of Linux. I like it but I'm not an evangelist. People should make their own decisions. I have 4 machines with various flavors of Linux and 6 machines with various versions of Windows. This doesn't include a bunch of Raspberry PIs, two of which are emulating PDP-11s. I'm agnostic. All they need to do is get a Live CD and play with it, overlooking the fact that it is 100 times slower than an installed version.