This is an interesting take, especially coming from a non-gaming focused tech website like Ars Technica. I feel like it’s been too long since people were truly hyped about half life 3 though, and this wouldn’t be enough, even if Valve did go through with it.
People are increasingly unhappy with windows though, and the EoL of windows 10 may push people to Linux anyways.
I think if they did a special launch on SteamOS and made it super polished it would be a nice demonstration… Or maybe an exclusive demo or minigame or something along those lines. They did some nifty stuff for VR this way and it got people pretty hyped about it for a while back when Vive launched.