Valve released a runtime specifically to combat the variation problem. This allows developers to target a specific runtime and Valve will make the software stack work with as many distros as possible.
On the other hand, that stack can only contain so much, and a lot of Linux bugs involve sound subsystems, GPUs, and compositors/X11/window manager configuration issues. You can't quite target the Linux runtime and assume everything will just work, but at least you don't need to target specific versions of glibc and libxml2 anymore.
On the other hand, that stack can only contain so much, and a lot of Linux bugs involve sound subsystems, GPUs, and compositors/X11/window manager configuration issues. You can't quite target the Linux runtime and assume everything will just work, but at least you don't need to target specific versions of glibc and libxml2 anymore.