I think most people are excited about Steam on Linux because of gaming, but I've actually been excited because of better driver support. If this makes Nvidia put more effort into their Linux drivers and tools, it will make life a lot better for CUDA programming too. (I haven't tried OpenCL or AMD GPGPU stuff yet.)
> it will make life a lot better for CUDA programming too Well having done quite a bit of CUDA programming under Windows and Linux, i'm interested in knowing what you find lacking on Linux ? Performance wise i can report CUDA is just as fast on Linux as it is on windows. Regarding tool support, i actually prefer to work under Linux, not because tools are better per se, but because your usual Unix tool chain does wond…
I guess you haven't had any laptop with the Optimus technology (NVIDIA dedicated card + Intel integrated GPU). There no official NVIDIA Optimus support for Linux whatsoever :(