[sontek]

This percentage is huge since its fairly new and not all games are ported yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to them yet.

[er35826]

This is not true at all. Most gamers aren't rocking dual-boots, and most gamers are still comfortably running with just a single Windows install of various flavors.

For a personal anecdote: I've been a gamer my entire life, but I didn't start dual-booting (or using two systems) until I decided to get serious with programming and hacking.

[jaredmcateer]

For me, even then, I didn't dual boot, for a long time I was happy programming in Windows and Linux was but a curiosity until I started working at iStock and one of the technical leads convinced me to give Vim a 2 week challenge where I immersed myself in it. Since then programming with linux as my IDE and Vim as my editor has ruined Windows for me, only thing I use it for now is XMBC + Netflix and Gaming.

I bought a dedicated laptop for programming. I have a dedicated box for gaming and one for media. With steam and pipelight it's the beginning of the end for my windows machines. I figure it's going to be gaming, as ever, that will keep the life support on my windows machine going, but it will be relegated to living in the utility room with my htpc if/when the Steam Machine streaming is proven.

[maaaats]

But at the same time, it may be just a temporarily boost from all the Linux coverage. I myself tested it recently and abandoned it fast, and will not probably try again for a long time as long as almost none of my games are playable in Linux.

[mh-]

1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux

no, 1.85% of the user base tried Steam on Linux. we don't know what portion of those adopted it as their primary platform to use Steam.

[SeppoErviala]

I didn't use Steam since switching to Linux in 2008 until now that it is officially available. Some of that 1.85% are new (or returning) customers.