Valve Reaffirms Commitment To Linux, SteamOS

While there was a lot of hoopla recently about Valve removing the "Steam Machines" link from their main navigation on their website, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais has written a public post to reaffirm the company's commitment to Linux and SteamOS.

While he acknowledges that Valve dropped the "Steam Machines" link as it wasn't getting much traffic, they are still committed to their Linux goals. "We're still working hard on making Linux operating systems a great place for gaming and applications. We think it will ultimately result in a better experience for developers and customers alike, including those not on Steam."

Pierre-Loup brought up the investments that Valve has been making into Vulkan for improving Linux as well as macOS/iOS gaming. He also notes the Steam Shader Pre-Caching and other efforts. On that side, they continue doing a ton of work for Linux drivers and in fact are among the top contributors to Mesa this year thanks to their work on RadeonSI and RADV in particular. They have also been funding Keith Packard's work on improving the VR stack through the X.Org Server, DRI3, and other plumbing.

In ending there are hints at things to come, "At the same time, we're continuing to invest significant resources in supporting the Vulkan ecosystem, tooling and driver efforts. We also have other Linux initiatives in the pipe that we're not quite ready to talk about yet; SteamOS will continue to be our medium to deliver these improvements to our customers, and we think they will ultimately benefit the Linux ecosystem at large."

His post in full can be read via SteamCommunity.com.