It would of course be better if the drivers where OSS and integrated in the kernel, but for more than a decade Nvidia was the only option for high performance graphics on Linux (Intel always had very good stable OSS drivers but not the hardware to match).
For AI work, their cards are great, yes. Also for accelerated science. We have quite a few of their cards at the bottom floor, churning out number non-stop.
However, desktop experience with their cards are constantly degrading after Tesla got up to speed. VSync can't be enabled without losing 25% performance hit. DPMS support was broken for 1.5 years on DisplayPort. Then, DisplayPort started to lose link when you turn off your monitor for whatever reason.
These things add-up, and when your card is deprecated you can't move to open drivers even if said drivers have lower performance, it breaks the camel's back.
If you're on the happy path (hardware + software wise), NVIDIA is great, and if you don't, you're too poor for NVIDIA and they can't be bothered.
So no, I'll not be buying NVIDIA card for my desktop use.
I've been running NVIDIA GPUs on Linux workstations in personal and professional settings for almost 20 years. It's been always been an extremely functional and high performance experience.
It's annoying that the drivers are proprietary, and have to be rebuilt during kernel upgrades, but they have worked very well for a long time.