[ta0967]

[Valve stats show] an accumulated 0.89% market share for all the linux distros combined.

that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. i begrudgingly bought a windows license for the family gaming box only because we couldn't play some games we wanted otherwise.

The lack of common API that _all_ of the linux distros [...]

every single AAA game i've installed from Steam has its own copy DirectX and base libraries (Redistributable Runtime), which leads me to believe there is a lack of common API that a few recent versions of Windows would support equally, yet they ship. this approach, btw, is exactly what most proprietary software for UNIX or UNIX-like systems i've seen has done: static linking or bundling your own copies. is there something i'm missing that precludes applying this to games for GNU/Linux?