Anyone who has visited a Linux/tech news site today will no doubt be aware of the launch of the beta version of Valve's SteamOS. I've not had chance to try it myself yet and I won't get the chance to play with it for a few days either but its based on a heavily patched Debian Wheezy. What could be of more interest to Linux audio land is that it uses a heavily patched 3.10 RT kernel. Although Valve's tweaks won't have been made with JACK / LA in mind, I can't help but wonder if their modifications will be of benefit to Linux audio? Regardless, I think SteamOS is fantastic news for Linux. This is hot on the heels of DOOM's 20th birthday. DOOM was of course one of the first commercial games to have a Linux port and to later get GPL'd and it was the game that convinced me (and millions of others, I'm sure) to buy a PC.