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Valve's SteamOS Now Supports Vulkan, The Cross-Platform Alternative To DirectX 12 (pcworld.com)
SteamOS just gained support for Vulkan, the cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's DirectX 12 and Apple's Metal. This should make it easier for developers to write and optimize games for SteamOS, closing the performance gap with Windows and encouraging more developers to support Linux. This feature arrived in SteamOS Brewmaster version 2.63. Valve added version 355 of the Linux Nvidia driver, which means SteamOS offers Vulkan support when used alongside Nvidia hardware. Intel's graphics hardware should also support Vulkan on SteamOS in the near future. AMD is still working on its new driver, known as AMDGPU, that will replace the current fglrx driver for SteamOS and other Linux-based platforms. If you use Linux distribution besides SteamOS, you can download Nvidia's Vulkan-ready Linux driver or an experimental version of Intel's Vulkan-enabled graphics driver.
SteamOS != Steam.
I have issues with the statement "the cross-platform alternative to DirectX". OpenGL was a cross-platform graphics standard before DirectX even existed.
And Steam is designed to keep you from running the games that you've bought.
The state keeps me from driving the car I bought. Just because I drive 127 MPH in a school zone *ONE TIME*, now I'm no longer allowed to drive my own car.
It is an open API (though not free, you have to pay membership dues) that can be implemented on basically any platform people wish. As of right now, only nVidia and Intel have implemented it and only on Windows and Linux as far as I know, nVidia may have it in their drivers for other platforms. Apple has expressed no interest and most other OSes rely on the graphic drivers to provide APIs. AMD will eventually probably get a driver out, they were one of the driving forces behind Vulkan, however they suck at drivers so it always seems to take them a long time.