I welcome you to point out anything that is wrong or incorrect in my post. Anything that so many people who've failed to completely switch to Linux have encountered themselves.

You can't possibly be that much of a hermit to believe that. Surely. That's a troll post, I hope.

Remember even WINDOWS gaming is too hard for a lot of people, with DX updates, various runtimes, licensing, etc,etc .. thus, IMHO, console sales

I'm not sure what you mean by licensing (DRM maybe? In which case I agree), but as for DirectX updates and various runtimes, virtually all games which are distributed via an installer have the redists available and either automatically install what's missing, or give a checkbox option to do it at the end of installation. If people can't handle this then I fear for the level of computer literacy of the modern gamer.

Why though? You can guarantee the game would also be available for Windows (if it wasn't Valve would piss off a shit-ton of people), plus you'd lose access to a lot of other very useful proprietary and Windows-only software like MS Office and the Creative Suite, or that little niche application you might only use so often but would be a pain to try to get WINE to run.

And once you eventually get bored of Half-Life 3 (and you will), you'll get annoyed at yourself for being swept up in the Linux hype. I've been there way too many times to fall for it again, no matter how Linux keeps growing.

To be honest, I'm relatively happy with the combination of FOSS games, indie games like in the Humble Bundles, and older commercial games like Doom 3 and Wolf-ET such that gaming solely in Linux wouldn't be an issue for me. The problem, however, is a question of effort. Let me list one example:

- Doom 3 -

Windows:
* Install game
* Patch
* Play

Linux:
* Install using the latest Linux installer using the text interface (which was only supposed to be a backup in case the GUI works, which it doesn't anymore because it was built to use the GTK1.2 libraries which don't work properly/aren't available with modern distributions).
* Copy the required .pak files from the game's CDs to where the binary is installed, because the official installer won't do it automatically (though it's possible someone's written a script to do this by now).
* Run, then find out there's no sound because OSS was deprecated in modern Linux distributions. Spend an hour googling and trying different options until you find out the correct method to launch D3 with sound:

doom3 +set s_alsa_pcm plughw:0 +set s_driver alsa

* Create a .desktop file/link because the installer fails to do so properly, otherwise you don't get a shortcut in your DE of choice.
* Play, then discover you have massively jerky framerates because the Linux kernel changed to use a different method of timing (too complicated for me to understand) which affected how Doom 3 determines timing. Fixed using this additional variable during launch

set com_fixedtic 1

* Play and enjoy the same game that worked with far less effort in Windows.

Sure, half the problem was in iD not giving a crap at producing a good installer that would do most of the work for you (like copying required files) and not using static GTK libraries that would survive changes to distros. But things like the removal of OSS within the default builds of distros as well as the change to kernel timings, kinda do make a few problems for older games.

Newer stuff tends to works better, but often there are quirks even in newer Linux ports (I won't keep listing stuff but there are a number of complaints about bad Linux ports of a number of Humble Bundle games - look them up). For gaming, I get tired of messing about when things just fucking WORK in Windows. It's suppose to be entertainment and escapism after all.

At least he post under a username to allow some credibility and history to his posts, AC.

-- wallbase (a fresh account for an old Slashdotter).

Why would someone use an internet browser from a third party when you can use the one built into the operating system?

This logic was enough to get IE to be the majority browser for a time, but if the alternatives are better, people will find them and use them. I really doubt the Windows Store will be better than the ecosystem Steam supports. At worse, it's a competitor to Steam. Surely Gabe can handle a little competition. Or is that why he hates Windows 8?