> I will also note that Valve probably are one of the biggest heralds of the year of the Linux desktop just by doing tonnes of work making games run in it well and hassle free. The biggest barrier to entry for Linux had long been that games dont work, thats basically solved now. So they get a bonus point for that..

And that's not charity either. Valve realized they needed to hedge their bets when Microsoft threatened to fuck them over with the Windows Store. Linux (or more specifically, SteamOS) is their backup plan.