Hopefully anyone who wants to run anything other than Windows on an Nvidia-produced device has learned their lessons at this point. Although, a cursed Nvidia Hackintosh would be extremely funny.

For normal people, there are three computer operating systems: Windows, Apple, and ChromeOS. Nvidia isn't going with ChromeOS and Apple hates their guts, so Windows is the only normal operating system they can market.

Their marketing makes clear that these devices aren't the piddly Chromebooks that ruined the desktop experience for so many people (expensive Chromebooks were nice, but rare in practice).

Qualcomm promised Linux support, failed to deliver, and now anybody burnt by their promise won't want to buy their hardware again. If they promise a Windows PC, people won't have reason to complain when Linux or FreeBSD or SerenityOS won't boot on there. Given Qualcomm's failures here, Nvidia is probably doing the right thing.

> Although, a cursed Nvidia Hackintosh would be extremely funny.

I did this for years. We ran Resolve color correction suites with external chassis to place multiple Nvidia GPUs in it at a fraction of the cost of the shitty TrashCanMac that was available. Lots of people continued to use the 2012 Cheese Grater MacPro with its older CPUs. The only way to get modern (at the time) compute in a Mac was to use a Hackintosh. Since it wasn't for personal use, not having things like AppStore, Messages, Music, etc wasn't a big deal, so building a Hackintosh was easier.

I built one for personal prosumer use around the time of the 1080s that allowed me more machine for the dollar than Apple offered. Once the M-series chips came out and they were capable of what the Hackintosh was doing for me put me off of building anything newer.

Windows is dying a death by a thousand small, user-unfriendly decisions. This is genuinely sad because the technology underlying Windows is actually very robust and flexible.

So, the partnership is maybe natural, but not prospective. Also, note how Linux is getting popular among gamers. Of course, it's way behind Windows, but the direction of the change is clear.

I'm convinced that Nvidia is not primarily targeting the consumer market and that the ultimate goal for its CPUs is the server space. The company invests effort where the money is, and consumer products account for only a fraction of its total revenue. Maintaining a presence in the consumer market seems more like a way to avoid a complete pivot than a strategic priority.