I use SE in a little planetarium under wine/Linux, Steam dont be usefull for us
From my understanding Valve recently added a heavily upgraded version of Wine to Steam that manages to run a lot of Windows games, so SE might actually be able to run better than before under Linux if it uses Steam. Read
this for more. In fact, maybe the author could look into getting SE in Valve's "guaranteed compatible" whitelist on Steam, since there are very few games in there right now it would be a huge publicity boost.
Born too early to explore space... but just in time for Space Engine!