If anyone had any doubts about the commitment of Valve to the Linux operating systems, they should be put to rest with the latest SteamOS sale. It just shows how serious the company really is and that it will carry out its promises, of breaking the Windows monopoly on gaming.

One of the last barriers preventing people from adopting Linux on a much more massive scale is the gaming industry and everything that comes with it. Windows has been the de facto gaming platform for years and it had the support of everyone involved, from small developers and up to the big hardware makers. Everyone wanted to make money and it's understandable why that happened.

It also created a sort of monopoly, but it's true that the Linux platform didn't really make it easy for developers to build games. Up until a couple of years ago proprietary video driver support was terrible and there was no one to pour money into the platform. The drivers are now a little better and there is a sort of consistency building up into the system. It's slow and it will take some time, but we're getting there.

The main investor in the future of Linux is actually Valve, who is investing a lot of time and money into SteamOS. This makes developers and publishers do the same thing and we already have 1000 games on Steam for Linux. For now, everyone is following Valve's lead and determination, but it looks like big changes are coming.

The SteamOS sale on Steam is a signal for the industry

The Linux community went nuts when the latest SteamOS arrived and for good reason. Out of the blue a number of triple A games have been announced for the Linux platform. No warning has been given and no rumors leaked. So, titles like Shadow of Mordor, Batman: Arkam City, Payday 2, and Saints Row 4 landed out of the blue.

It's also true that Warner Bros. has already shown what is interesting in Linux, but Volition for example, the makers of Saints Row, didn't say a peep.

The SteamOS is actually just Valve flexing its muscles. They plan to release Steam Machines, their own console powered by SteamOS, in the fall of 2015 so they need all the support they can get. The company also said that it planned to shake its dependency on Microsoft and Windows, and what better way to do that than by developing your own operating system based on Linux.

All the games that run on SteamOS will also run on other Linux distributions, so it's a win-win situation for Valve. In any case, you should really check the SteamOS sale and see if you like what the future holds.