The number of times I've seen people waiting for SteamOS makes me kind of excited that there's so much demand for an alternative to Windows, nervous that a SteamOS general release isn't going to live up to expectations and frustration that that "demand" isn't moving to other distros of its own accord or otherwise being captured by someone savvy.

I think overall it means that "people", even if they have a more positive view of Linux than they did 10 years ago are still lacking the confidence and know-how to be able to make an actual switch.

There are reasons, sure, but there's absolutely a pool of people right now who would be suitable for Linux and appreciate the switch but there just isn't enough activation energy there to get them over the line.

Seriously, the moment there's a linux distro that really "just works", even with games on NVidia cards, I think Windows will lose a very large chunk of market share. So many people are sick of it, but most people still fear that stuff won't work right on Linux.

Anyway, Valve is probably the most likely party to pull that off.

First they have to convince studios to target Linux instead of translating Windows APIs.

Why, though? If the Windows subsystem for Linux can provide many people an adequate environment for dev work, why can't the equivalent Linux subsystem for Windows provide an adequate gaming platform?

Don't build castles in other people's kingdoms.

Even Microsoft learnt that with WSL, hence why WSL 2.0 is a plain VM, hardly any different from Virtual Box or VMware Workstation, other than is already on the box and doesn't cost extra.