When Linux is user friendly enough to the point where your average user knows how to use one. As of right now, Linux is just too fragmented in the form of different distro.
If adobe and other paid professional tools start to develop on Linux, things will be very very different. And Microsoft will do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening from what I feel.
SteamOS like Linus has said, broken on arrival and needs a lot of refinement.
the answer is when linux finally kills tar as a file format and the linux terminal becomes as useless as the windows command prompt.most people don't like having to look up or remember things that they only need to do a handful of times.
I've been on Linux nearly a year as a gamer. I've purchased 3 or 4 games that support Linux and going forward the only games I buy will be native Linux games. I do hope there is enough ground swell to get it going mainstream.
Installing Ubuntu, Steam and the Nvidia drivers is basic click and it works. I believe AMD is harder but I do not have that hardware to know.
I can run my windows games through playonlinux. Both steam games and GoG games. It can require tinkering to get it working and that is not user friendly but does work.
There are projects like https://virgil3d.github.io/ that in the next release of Ubuntu will support 3D Windows gaming in VM's at native speeds. It is still in development but very interesting. I would love to see the day where I can spin up windows in a VM to play an old game under linux without a dedicated video card to pass through.
It isn't a case of more people using Linux will cause more stuff to be produced that is Linux compatible. It is a case of a lot of people use Windows. Lots of the people that use Linux even confess to running Windows when needed.
Why produce something for Linux when it can be produced for Windows and will still reach the Linux users. That effectively makes producing it even easier. Not to mention the tech support (I could just imagine getting tech support for a Windows only product not working properly with Linux). It is effectively reaching the entire market for that product type. Without having to actually support all the platforms that that type of product are commonly found on.
The only way to encourage more stuff to fully support Linux is to only use Linux for that kind of stuff. The more computer users do this the more that the only way to get to them will be to produce products for their only way of computing.
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To this end I have completely moved over to Linux. I won't be using Wine, emulators, or anything else to run windows software / hardware. It means that I lost more then two thirds of my digital gaming library in the move over. Since I will never be able to play them again. Even some of my favorites that just got released.
It is what I have to do though. It isn't even to support Linux. It is for other reasons that I don't think would be on-topic.
