Linux has matured into a robust desktop operating system

"- Linux is as far from a gaming platform as ever."

I will not make the mistake of claiming that Linux has solved the problem, but this really isn't true. Even as recently as five years ago, if a game was published, Linux either couldn't run it, or required crazy emulation schemes. This list is far better than it used to be: http://store.steampowered.com/search/#sort_by=Reviews_DESC&t...

If Valve wanted to keep pushing Linux gaming, it could probably make it a real thing. My guess is that they won't, because the strategic point of their Linux support was to make Microsoft realizes there is indeed a viable alternative so the rent they can charge is not as much as they were threatening. Plus in the meantime Microsoft got a different CEO who has been much less belligerent. So, lest I sound like a fanboy, my prediction is that you are looking at the high point of Linux gaming right there in that link.

Still... who knows. Having done the work they've done, it may yet be in Valve's interest to keep the threat alive for SteamOS, and a lot of the latest engines are growing Linux support. (When you support all the consoles, all the phones, all the portable consoles, and Mac and Windows, Linux is hardly a huge additional platform to support anymore, especially when you're already supporting Android, which I know doesn't mean you support "linux" but isn't completely irrelevant either.)

But there is definitely stuff that works now, which means that it's a big improvement over 5 years ago. If you like this is far more about how the situation was utterly hopeless 5 years ago than how it's heaven-on-Earth now.

"Robust" is a funny word choice here. Linux desktops in the early 2000's were very robust in the sense that they were stable, predictable, and performed decently under high workloads. They weren't easy to install and set up correctly, but once you got sound and graphics working, you were good to go. Until your next hardware upgrade.

A Linux desktop is a lot easier to install now, and software support isn't as much of an issue as it used to be, largely because so much has moved to the web. I wouldn't say it's more robust though. I ran an Xubuntu laptop for several years. Even though it was the LTS version, a few times a year, something major like sound or video would break on a system update, and I'd spend a few hours getting it working again. This isn't something I'd recommend to people who want something that just works.

My Chromebook has been very reliable. I would say it's robust, but then again, I can't run Steam or GOG games on it, as mentioned in the article.

> it sucks for everything else (compared to Windows, for example)

This is very, very broad. I moved from Windows 8 about a year ago and I find it to be comparable and better for most of the stuff I do.

> even the purpose-built PCs deliver significantly lower performance with Linux than Windows.

I agree that those numbers are significant, but frankly everything there looks acceptable to me. I have a custom build for gaming but am also a "patient gamer" so I've been doing just fine in Linux. I have been playing through Bioshock Infinite with no problem and enjoying the hell out of the recent Linux release of my current favorite FPS, Insurgency. In fact, I had a long standing stuttering issue in Insurgency under Windows 8 that ultimately led me to just give up on the game, sadly. Under Linux, no issue at all and equal performance. Anecdotal, of course, but just trying to illustrate that the recent increase of gaming availability is very nice for casual gamers like myself.

> The NVidia side is much better, but still tends to crash more than on Windows or OSX

Any source on this? I have a 780 and can't recall even a single issue with crashing because of the graphics driver.

> My quite standard desktop (Xeons, NVidia GPU, SATA SSDs)

Are Xeons really "standard" for desktop? This is is a legitimate question, I couldn't find anything quickly. Just thinking about market share vs Core and how well this may be tested in Linux distros currently.

All of which are not attributable to Linux per se, but to 3rd parties who refuse to deal in Linux. Reverse engineering hardware to create a driver is hard work, and all because vendors refuse to provide a stable driver for their own hardware (trackpads and graphics cards being the obvious examples). Valve has proven that there IS a gaming market for Linux when everyone said there wasn't, and proved it months in advance of the release of the first SteamBox. How many other software vendors have been parroting that "there is no market" reasoning without ever backing it up? And sometimes you have to create a market, not wait for it to exist before trying to fill it.

I think this is old news. I've been using Linux as my main OS since 2004 or so. People say it sucks for games, but I am not a gamer. Now, I spent a lot of time on Windows between 2008 and 2011 (corporate issued laptop) and I can tell you it really, really sucked for anything software development related (software that would not run on Windows, that is). The only thing it could do better than Linux was opening MS Office files, but that's kind of obvious.