So Steam, right?

So the Linux blogs, podcasts and youtube channels are buzzing about Steam and well, why not?

It IS a big deal. Valve is a big player, and in addition to some of their own titles, the existence of a well recognized platform for distribution will undoubtedly help push other developers towards the Linux fold.
Valve has worked very aggressively with AMD, Nvidia and Intel to improve graphics performance, which will benefit everybody, and there's been talk of both Valve and Canonical talking to other developers to help them along.

The Beta is out there, and even if you didn't get an invite, it's trivial to use. I'll leave you to Google that. Quite a few Humble Bundle games will install and play just fine, though many won't yet. But it's Beta stage, so that's to be expected.

So how does this stack up against Desura which we've covered before?
Well, pretty good actually.

Even with it only being a Beta, Steam already seems faster, more responsive and more stable. I've had a single crash, whereas Desura is still quite crash happy, whether I run on 32 bit or 64 bit.
The main downside is that the interface seems a bit un-intuitive. Now, some of this may be from having gotten the hang of the Desura interface, but that came very quickly. With Steam, it took me a bit to figure out where different things were located.
It's entirely possible that I am just a dork, but I'm not entirely sold on the layout. But if it ends up working as great as it is shaping up to be, it will be very welcome indeed, and I think will mark a milestone for Linux gaming.

Comments? Dreams? Fears?