Interesting... it took a game distribution platform to convince people that Linux is a viable gaming platform. Isn't it ironic?

Right now it's brand new and much-hyped, we could easily be dealing with a case of regression to the mean. [wikipedia.org]
Let's see how the numbers looks 6 months down the road.

Ever hear of growth? You have to start somewhere. I'd say it's not bad. Just give it time, you're passing judgment too soon.

Companies won't port games unless they see enough potential customers, and they have traditionally made the assumption that there are very few linux game players and that the few there are would just dual boot to play games anyway.
If enough people buy the linux games available on steam, then you will get more being made, and you will also see developers creating their initial games with portability in mind (eg using opengl instead of directx etc) to decrease the cost of porting.

5% of the market leader is a failure, 2% for the market trailer is a success.

That 2.02% is way over inflated due to TF2 players installing Linux to get the Team Fortress 2 tux item. /v/, /vg/, reddit, /g/ and the TF2 irc channels were absolutely full of TF2 players that were looking for help to temporarily install Linux. The overwhelming opinion also seemed to be that Ubuntu is terrible and that Linux isn't worth using on the desktop.

If this article had been on neowin and had praised Microsoft's new OS for breaking through on a gaming distribution platform after a lot of marketing effort from the distributor including an opening sales and had managed 2% share, Slashdotters would have been cackling and calling it hype.

What the TFA is is hype and wishful thinking. Linux has an enormous long way to go before its even considered worth porting to as part of current game development.

Its a start, but no more than that.

Those of us who are old enough can remember lots of dawns in the IT industry - most of them false.

Nope. That's why Valve is doing this... to avoid having MS having them by the balls.

You are a dwarf calling a midget shorty.

Both platforms suffer from the problem of "paying their own way". You are a deluded fool to try and claim otherwise. MacOS is in the exact same boat as Linux here.

As far as this "compatibility" problem you're trying to manufacture goes: I still play my old Loki games.

> Microsoft has never been market leader in either phones or search.

Microsoft has been a desktop monopoly since before the first line of the Linux kernel was written. They are one of the largest corporations on the planet with enough market power and leverage to push their way into new markets easily.

In the market where Linux lives, simply not having been put out of business by Microsoft is remarkable. Apple is very unusual in this and nearly didn't make it. The corpses of companies that tried to offer competitive products liter the landscape.

I've been a system builder for more than 20 years, building on average 3 boxes a week and probably fixing a dozen more, know how many times I've seen Windows update break a driver since XP came out? TWICE, that's it, that's all. The first was a cheapo capture card by some fly by night company that was here today gone later today that wouldn't run on anything except XP RTM for some reason and the second was a K-World super cheapo wireless card that would crap itself if you looked at it funny, it didn't like Vista SP1 but considering I had to use the XP driver because the company seems to abandon products after 6 months I don't know how one could blame Windows for that one.

Again put your money where your mouth is, I DARE you to prove me wrong. Take The Hairyfeet challenge, film it from start to stop with NO breaks (so we know you aren't hunting forums for fixes when the camera is off) and post your video to any of the bazillion sites that will let you. Go ahead and prove me wrong why don't you? You won't and the reason is because you CAN NOT DO IT because in over a dozen tries with different distros and the most boring hardware I could find Linux shit itself and died before 5 years, half the time Windows gets support, of updates could be applied! How fucking sad is it you see in Linux forum after forum the advice to "install clean" for every God damned update, that is the kind of shit Win98 users had to do and you call THAT progress?

if you can't even supply a fucking lousy 5 years worth of updates, when the average low end system has multiple cores and oodles of RAM and thus can be counted on to easily last 6 to 8 years WTF makes you think your product is ready for the masses? You think Grandma is secretly a bash programmer? Sally the secretary has a spare box running Windows to Google for fixes when the Linux one craps all over the wireless?

At the end of the day I want Linux to succeed I really really do. I think Win 8 is an abomination that should be recalled and I think MSFT treats us system builders like dogshit so if anybody wants Linux to be ready its me but I'm not gonna lie and delude myself into pretending that a system shitting on drivers every. damned. time. you update the stupid thing is acceptable, because its not. And frankly Linux users should be ashamed of letting the devs get away with it!

If you listen to the crap people say On the Internet(tm) then the 2% of Steam users that use Linux simply can't exist. Some of these were never true, some are no longer true, but all of these were echo-chambered within the last 24 hours:

* All Linux users are fanatical idealists that won't use any closed source software, ever.
* Linux doesn't exist on the Desktop and is only good for servers.
* Linux is only good for phones.
* Linux users spend all their of their time at the command line.
* TCO of Linux is too high.
* ... blah blah blah

It's all bullshit that was never true or is no longer true (and hasn't been for some time). Linux excels everywhere there isn't a monopoly. You're not looking for the year of the desktop where Linux finally overcomes it's shortcomings. You're looking for the fall of a monopoly.

Valve is incredibly successful as a store selling games on Windows. Creating a Linux gaming platform is an enormous amount of work to enter a currently miniscule market. The ONLY reason Valve is doing it is they are worried about Microsoft deciding, in Steve Ballmer's immortal words, to "choke off their air supply".

ZOMFG did you even READ what you posted? Anybody wants to see how fanboyism creates delusional thinking here ya go, the guy says "I've not had a single issue...other than my graphics driver is broken (which I blame somewhere else instead of where it should be blamed) which I had to jump through the hoops for, but I drank the koolaid so that is okay"

You do NOT know how badly I want to reach through the screen and shake you right now while screaming at you QUIT TAKING SHIT ALREADY! WHAT THE FUCK, the community is so damned delusional the guys can post shit with problems that are...what? Features now? Serious wake the fuck up folks, this is beyond sad.