Gaben is closing that gap for us.
Also, Minecraft runs fine on Linux. If GP poster had trouble, it's probably down to a video driver issue (which aren't unique to Linux, but are arguably more painful), or a new-environment-learning-curve thing.
The big studios might not care too much (though even this isn't really universal, since there are plenty of big studios that do target Linux/SteamOS), but there's a lot of activity from indie developers, many of whom are targeting SteamOS before they even target OS X (though there still aren't any SteamOS exclusives that I know of).
I've seen and helped people that hit these brick walls everywhere, whether it's installing the OS itself, a compiler, accessing a thumb drive, or whatever other task they want to accomplish.
These are things that may be incredibly trivial for us that's comfortable in this environment, but a brick wall for others.
I consider myself a technical person and while I think it's fun to use Linux, it's certainly not productive.
Should read: "...I'm certainly not productive."
Just because you struggled with the Linux paradigm, it doesn't mean that it's an unproductive platform.