They already ship their own repackaged Ubuntu, called DGX OS. It's basically Ubuntu with extra software, drivers, and configuration. Switching the kernel around

They already ship their own repackaged Ubuntu, called DGX OS. It's basically Ubuntu with extra software, drivers, and configuration. Switching the kernel around wouldn't be hard for them (they may already be rolling their own kernel). That said, part of the reason nvidia is so popular is that it's easy to buy their cards, spin up a system, and let a researcher play with it. If people had to buy the dgx workstations for this it would limit them to only the high level cards. There are a lot of benefits to giving every researcher in a company their own hardware for experimenting and debugging before they send their models off to the big clusters for training. https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html