As the title says...

VMware have ignored all requests (there has been a thread running for 2 years on their forums) for a version of Virtual Center or the Virtual Infrastructure client that will run natively on Linux.

So if you are an enterprise with only Linux servers and Linux virtual machines and want to use VMware ESX, you have to go and buy, manage, support, patch and secure a Windows server just to manage ESX.

So much for "joining the Linux club".

If you're a pure-Linux shop, hopefully you've moved onto other, more clueful vendors for your virtualization tech by now. It will be nice when/if ESX has a native Linux version, interoperable with its existing/up-revved brethren of course; but I don't see too many people holding their breath waiting for it to happen. As you noted, those who absolutely insist on the VMWare route have bit the bullet and sunk money into (hopefully) limited, controlled CP/M 2008 systems; the rest of us just have to find other ways to make do. Life sucks when other companies control your business execution...