Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

People who are really into high end games will often want to build their own machines (or get a friend to do it , or buy an alienware PC).

This means that gamers are very price/performance sensitive when it comes to buying the computers, I know this is a reason that many of my gaming friends will shy away from choosing a Mac when it comes to buying a computer. They would rather buy the PC for the same price as an iMac because with the PC they will usually be able to get a higher end graphics card + upgradeablity for the same price.

if Linux became a viable gaming platform then they will be able to buy the same sort of PCs they always did and will be able to re-invest the $100 or so they would have paid for a Windows License in faster hardware.

Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start running AAA games, or will it in fact be something highly proprietary which is designed for a specific subset of devices which happen to run Linux kernels?

I see a lot of people here discussing "market share" but as has been proved by Apple market share is certainly not everything. In reality the computer market is broken into a number of distinct markets that have overlap and some of these are more lucrative than others.

Pricing structure will make a difference here, I wonder if the Linux games will be the same price as their Windows counterparts? I remember a few years ago there were a number of companies that tried to break into Linux gaming but the prices for the games were astronomical. Many 5 year old games that could have had for Windows for about $10 were selling for $40+ on Linux.

Linux Steam could also focus on other styles of games too, perhaps there is more demand amongst Linux users for highly cerebral RTS & RPG games rather than the latest COD that could be sold at a higher price? All you would really need is one or two "killer" titles that were Linux exclusive (think XBoX and Halo) to make whole categories of gamers take it seriously. Of course it is both a blessing and a curse in the sense that stuff developed for Linux is often easier to port to other platforms than the other way around.

As a Desktop Linux user myself I am not too concerned with "market share" , to an extent I couldn't care less if I am the only the person that uses it. What I really care about is being able to use Linux for all of my day to day tasks (I have a Windows dual boot but I would rather skip the step of having to power cycle my computer at least once a day).

There are growing numbers of alternatives, from cloud based systems and from LibreOffice etc. Not to mention that the "word processor" itself as a category of product may become less appealing. Word Processing fit into a world where communication and documents were primarily pieces of paper sent by post and fax and this is the metaphor that it is built around. I think this is mostly still in place due to the stubbornness of the generation who are currently in charge at most companies/governments and grew up around this.

One project I will be working on in the near future is for a company who currently use Office. It will essentially be a modified Wiki that will allow them to share information & documents internally (converting existing .doc from outside sources into wiki entries will be one part of it, also automatically adding incoming emails to the wiki in some cases). It will also allow things like producing high quality PDFs for clients.

Once this is in place they will pretty much be able to uninstall their word-processors.

  > As a Desktop Linux user myself I am not too concerned
  > with "market share" , to an extent I couldn't care less
  > if I am the only the person that uses it.

  > Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just
  > apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start
  > running AAA games