Black_Stormy wrote:I think this is what valve meant when they said their plans for linux were massive. I think they are going to use steam as a way to deliver heaps of linux programs to linux users and attempt to become the premier software search engine for linux. I don't think they are going to focus on windows users for this software, that or they will try to push cross-platform programs more than wondoze-only ones. Or maybe they'll use the steam client to decide which platform the program is running on and offer only compatible programs. That would make more sense.
Or they'll just do it the same way they handle games already, They indicate if it is Steam-Play enabled, which atm means its mac and windows compatible.
Currently if the game supports one platform it is indicated by only that platforms icon. A look at the recent mac editions of CoD:BO shows this.
I'm not sure how they will handle "Steam-Play Enabled" when steam works on all 3 platforms. I'd just remove the tag from anything that doesn't support all platforms, but at this point that would be confusing because a lot of games don't have the linux support and would appear to "lose" "Steam-Play" support
Also it's obvious that part of the pulling effect of these apps is that they feature integration with Steam and it's services. So this lends itself to more open applications, not so much the likes of major players like Autodesk, Adobe, ect who don't need to support steam because they already have strong positions.
Also the big plans for linux is probably more to do with the linux steam beta
[1] and future ports of Valve's games to linux. We gotta remember that approx. 96.66% of users of steam use some version of windows at least.
[2] It's unsure how many of them would use/switch to linux for apps(or games for that matter).
This is all conjecture on my part, so take it with a grain of salt.