Installing 50 Steam Games on Linux Finale (28-50) (deleted)

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Windows 8 really made want to go back to Linux and get rid of my Microsoft dependency. But as you said, the support just isn't quite there.

My personal experience: Steam on Linux does not work. I have 24 games which are meant to be linux compatible on steam and, of these, only two can be successfully launched from within the steam client. Admittedly a lot of these are humble bundle games whose linux ports were slapdash and are pretty spotty generally, but I think it's still indicative of why people who could be using linux for gaming might choose not to.

It's not at all clear who to the point the finger at for the state of steam on linux. Either developers don't see it as worthwhile to get that working correctly, the steam API on linux is broken or Valve isn't providing developers with sufficient documentation. In any case, I think it's pretty unlikely that PC linux will ever provide a lucrative market for developers as free software is one the main factors that drives people to use these platforms, and open source development seems to be more highly valued by linux users than on other platforms. Steam is, in a lot of ways, a closed platform and I think ideological factors would probably dissuade a lot of long time linux users from adopting it, even if it functioned as intended.

That said, I am really happy that Valve is trying to be inclusive, and remain hopeful that someday they will get their act together. The linux version of Dota 2 is an unstable glitchy mess at the moment, but I still think it's amazing that it exists at all.

Pretty good that you got the demo for EUIV to work; a Linux supported game with a Windows-only demo that you can still get to run on Linux. I've been pretty consistently impressed by how many games have started to at least try to have Linux support, even if there are still as many issues as there are. As for people wanting to start changing to Linux as their primary platform, I think it'll mostly rely on something big: Windows becoming really bad, the more user-friendly distros becoming substantially more user-friendly, and either some middleware or an engine that'll make it easier to get the games in a functional state on all three OSs.

Unlike Glacial, I was able to get just about everything I tried on Kubuntu to run properly after a little tinkering, but it's such a small number of users that are willing or know how to do basically any tinkering that for most people it won't be worthwhile. I agree that in the current state of affairs, you have to be a Windows user to some extent if you're a "hardcore PC gamer", unless you're not playing anything even approaching AAA and instead stick with indies. It'll be interesting to see if Valve sticks with its Linux initiative for its future titles, or if the numbers are just going to continue to drop off to an extent that they deem it not worthwhile. To be fair however, I strongly doubt they expected the numbers to stay at or grow from that 2% in February. It's so easy to get a Linux VM up and running these days that you can be set up in less than 30 minutes just to see what it's like; I'm actually surprised the numbers were that high and that the drop-off hasn't been bigger.

I think for now, Linux really remains as a workstation environment, whereas Windows manages to be somewhat more of a hybrid, even if it lacks much of the more niche/tinkerer abilities that Linux has. At some point there will be a shift in the market, Windows won't always be far and away the leading OS, but other conveniences need to come into place before that transformation even begins to happen. For the time being though, most people aren't upset with or restricted by their Windows 7/8 functionality, and they don't need anything that even approaches what Linux is capable of, so they're not looking to move around. I still think it's really cool that Valve is supporting Linux and that so many devs have as well.