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For all that the Linux community tried, and god did we try, we didn't make real gaming on Linux progress until Valve started throwing developers are the projects. You can easily attribute real gaming (I love free civ as much as the next person, but it's not the same) coming to Linux Desktops.

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Isn't restricting your choice pool to FOSS games a satisfying compromise for GNU/Linux gaming?

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.en.html

Obviously kidding, Valve's efforts will IMO greatly expand Linux's target audience which is laudable. Seems to me that limitation was one of the main pullbacks for Linux adoption, especially in non-developer circles. Requiring dual-booting just for games on the Windows partition is not a convenient band-aid, and Stallman's solution never was one at all.

The other one is MS Office. If you get those two right, linux is a viable desktop OS.

Valve have done a lot, but there were commercial games available for Linux before Steam. Even the first Humble Bundle was before Steam for Linux.

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