With the widespread support for Steam/Valve on this forum because of their contributions to making Linux gaming easier, I’m now confused as to why people here are using Linux in the first place.
I personally do so out of support for FOSS software, the customizability, and actual ownership of software, which I thought were most people’s primary reasons for using any Linux distro. Steam seems antithetical to all of these. The software in the first place became popular as a form of DRM, and it gets publishers to use it for the allowance of DRM on the platform. The Steam client has the absolute minimum customizability. Your account can be banned at any point and you can lose access to many of the games you have downloaded.
Whenever I game on Linux I just use folders to sort my game library and purchase any games I want to play on itch.io or GoG. On my Linux PC I stay away from clients like Steam because I want a PC that works offline, and will work if all of my accounts were banned. It’s more of a backup PC.
Since Steam has every characteristic of Windows, 0 customizability, DRM, plenty of games that are spyware, I see no reason to really not use Windows instead for the much easier time I can have playing games.
Yes, I prefer many of the features of Linux distros, but using a client like Steam defeats the purpose of them. Ridiculous storage requirements due to unoptimized dependencies, having to have a background client running for some games and wasting resources on doing so.
So, why use Linux and support Steam, or use Linux and use Steam?
• 1) I'm disillusioned with and sick of Windows. I've been in there since the days of XP and 7, back then those systems could take a crapload of abuse from my young clueless arse prone to downloading hundreds of malware, yet still be functioning largely flawlessy. Hell, even Vista and 8 were still quite resilient, and I say this as someone who used Vista for 2 years. Meanwhile, Windows 10 completely falls apart if I so much as look at it wrong, and I never had a W10 installation last longer than 6 months without falling apart with bizarre bug after bizarre bug (such as leaving me completely unable to open any image files) - and this is without my past proneness to getting malware. I don't have the patience for that anymore, and then 11 comes in adding ads to the start menu and I just can't anymore.
• 2) I've come to appreciate how Linux handles some things better - mostly with regards to Flatpaks and their self-containment making it less risky to run some things and easier to keep track of what I have installed. I find it's also easier to deal with backups on Linux than Windows, especially with Kinoite (and I heard Tumbleweed also does a good job at it with snapper, too). In general I feel safer when using Linux, but on Windows I'm always paranoid about downloading a virus again - and with how brittle 10 is…
• 3) I don't really like monopolies and don't like the idea of Microsoft becoming basically synonymous with computers (and Apple isn't any better).
It's not perfect, mind you, and I do still feel many frustrations with Linux (I had to deal with Steam stopping working for no reason lately, but at least I could rollback to an earlier version), but I've genuinely not had much better luck with 10 at this point.