Even the NVIDIA drivers on Linux are superior to macOS' drivers. The problem with the NVIDIA drivers is that they don't play well with the rest of the ecosystem, but they do work. The only area where Linux is behind in graphics is on mobile, where the GPU vendors are perpetually unable to write working drivers.

I'm a professional graphics developer and I prefer the tooling on Linux to that of macOS.

Back to graphics drivers.

Most professional graphics developer I know rather user better tooling than only bare bones graphics drivers and RenderDoc.

I guess that is the same point of view that gave us OpenGL and Vulkan without any kind of tooling beyond drawing framebuffers with hardware support.

I does appeal to some, but not the majority, otherwise Linux adoption would have moved beyond 1% by now.

Like most software developers, graphics developers develop where the users are. That's why they predominantly use Windows. Some use macOS, primarily to develop iOS apps, which is, again, where the most valuable users are, particularly in North America.

Linux desktop market share, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with graphics tooling.

Sure it does, why bother with a market that not only lacks customers, it makes it a major hurdle to develop for?

While anyone on Apple and Windows platforms can enjoy Metal Frameworks, DirectTK, Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, PIX, Poser3D, Photoshop, Houdini, Cinema 4D, AfterEffects,...

On Linux, I guess having the freedom to use half baked copies of them, or hunting for libraries that should come out of the box with any graphics stack like 3D math, mesh handling and loading materials, is more important.

> Metal Frameworks, DirectTK, Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, PIX, Poser3D, Photoshop, Houdini, Cinema 4D, AfterEffects

I don't know them all, but FYI Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, PIX,Houdini, and Cinema 4D have native Linux versions.

I don't know about Metal Frameworks, DirectTK, Photoshop, and AfterEffects though, you might want to look into that.