[Jaecen]

Having a machine boot into Steam will have an interesting effect on other similar services like Origin and Desura. It will no longer be sufficient to request customers install yet another download manager/DRM platform; instead customers would have to boot in to a different OS to play their Origin games.

[pekk]

So much the worse for Origin, which was a stupid idea anyway.

Desura runs on Linux.

[Jaecen]

Desura runs on Linux, but assuming SteamOS is akin to "boot to Stream Big Screen," users won't have a Gnome or KDE desktop to install it to. In such a case, Desura's existence on SteamOS depends on either inclusion in Valve's marketplace or users' willingness to venture off the map.