How Steam on Linux works for me

While we're in that calm patch in between the big announcements and real products arriving, I've been thinking about why running Steam on Linux is a good idea. The biggest advantage for me is the it offers the opportunity to have an operating system dedicated to playing games.

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I don't do it as much these days but preparations for playing a game used to consist of waiting for Windows to start and load loads of programs and then spend about as much time closing them down to free up as much memory as possible.

Only using Ubuntu for one thing means that this won't be an issue.

And if you're only using Ubuntu for Steam games, the interface doesn't really come into it either. All we need is for Steam to include an option on installation to put an icon on the Desktop, or even better start maximised by default.

The Steam interface is unlikely to change so there's not going to be any learning issues there.

Given the amount of time and money that many gamers put into building and optimising their computers, installing an operating system dedicated to games doesn't seem unreasonable.

It's also worth pointing out that Ubuntu can be installed alongside Windows in less than half an hour these days.

More importantly, would you consider this an option if it offered better performance in games?