valve is not gonna relase a system that your average dumb ass can't use. stop worrying about LUNIX because omg only huge nerds use it and waste their time learning it and whatever other stupid microsoft propaganda you've eaten the last couple of years. the system will be easy to use
getting developers on board won't be that hard either. most developers already support the ps3 and planned to support the ps4, which would be using opengl anyways.
after all valve has done over the last couple of years, the least you can do is trust them this once
Is reverse engineering DirectX something Valve could legally do?
they could do it, they could use wine to get the majority of games running well from the get go, but both of these alternatives are simply bad
for one, because developers would continue to support only windows and consider the rest an afterthought. that would make the experience poorer.
for another, the point is to move people away from windows, developers and users alike. if it's just emulating directx, then there is no incentive. even if people move out, the better version is still available on windows. you could argue that by both directx/opengl versions existing, it'd have the same effect. but when microsoft starts trying to charge their 30% on every product sold, valve can just make the store linux only.
also, microsoft is gonna keep updating the windows apis to deprecate the current ones so people are forced to use the new apis and get locked into their store. that would continually make the emulation a problem, as well as not get rid of the true problem here