It’s all over the news. Steam for Linux is real and not another cruel April Fools prank. The gamer inside me is extremely excited about this, and after re-reading Phoronix’ article a dozen times, about how Gabe Newell is now a Linux Evangelist, it makes sense. If you believe the rumors, anyway.

From Phoronix, they’ve got Steam working on Ubuntu, as well as Left 4 Dead 2. I’m pretty sure they’ll release Steam for Linux in some sort of Beta fashion for Linux Gamers to iron out all the kinks, but once they feel confident, I think they’d move on to the next phase…

Rumors surfaced recently about Valve’s newfound interest for Hardware, and Valve making “SteamBox”, a dedicated console to play Steam Games, were mostly marked as ridiculous.

If Valve shipped “Valve Linux”? They’d probably bundle it up with propietary GPU drivers from NVidia and/or ATI to get a better bang from the GPU. They’d probably use a modified / custom UI. Sort of like MythTV, but for Steam Games.

Once they have the Distro, they’d need to come up with some hardware and sell it. I’m not saying it’d be easy for Valve to sell Steamboxes on Walmarts and Gamestops all over the world, but hey, we’re talking conspiracy rumors here.

And between Desura and Steam both appearing on Linux, I think it’s fairly safe to say that 2013 will finally be… The Year of the Linux Desktop.