The bloggers over at the Linux blog Phoronix caught up with Valve’s CEO Gabe Newell to ask about his video game distribution service and their intent to port it to the open source Linux operating system. The rumors of this particular port have been floating around since 2010 and it’s taken a few years, but finally Phoronix got a confirmation of these efforts.

“It has taken longer than most anyone would have anticipated, but the fact remains that Valve is in fact creating a native Linux port of their Steam game distribution client and of the Source Engine to run natively on Linux,” writes Michael Larabel of Phoronix blog. “Valve’s Linux work is finally soon to see the light of day in what will more than likely be the coming months.”

The gaming outfit also seeks to port popular games such as Left 4 Dead natively onto the Linux operating system. Games such as L4D and others can run on Linux, but only with virtual machines that pretend to be operating systems like Windows and provide all the APIs and hooks for DirectX and other elements of the OS. As a result, games that don’t run natively on Linux do have to be tweaked a bit to run in these virtual environments.

By getting proper ports into Linux by gaming distributors and developers it might produce more games switching over to open source operating systems.

According to the Phoronix article, getting Steam and the Source Engine ported to Linux are only part of the beginning of Valve’s intent with Linux distribution. Not so much an end game as a new market for them to provide digital downloads and the gaming experience.

Just having Steam and the Source Engine on Linux is not their end game. Gabe’s / Valve’s embracement of Linux is stunning, even if they only partially go after what was talked about. Valve easily has the potential of being the most Linux-friendly game company, especially with id Software still not having delivered any Rage Linux client, Epic Games not doing anything at the moment, and the other major studios not releasing their Linux clients.

The Linux market for big gaming studios is currently almost entirely untapped and so it could be a giant boon for Valve to pioneer the way.

Meanwhile, it will probably also bolster the video game market as a whole. After all, 2011 was a record sales year for video games with a dominance in digital distribution, cloud, and free-to-play games—all of which are covered by Valve’s Steam service.