I don't know what's going on with your steam install to take this much time to log you in, but it looks like your Linux install is left with some dangling parts.
First, we need to be clear if we're talking about Torvald's Linux vs Microsoft's Windows... or a bunch of company that don't give a fuck about you.
Sound boards, GPU and all this insane amount of hardware runs on Linux better than any Microsoft thing may ever hope to. Your issue with your sound card is not Linux... it's called "Creative".
There are way to develop sound cards and have them working on day -1 (even a day before it's release)... and way to put trick and trinkets in the binary blob without documenting anything (or, more precisely, keeping purposely hidden, since you always need source code to make binaries blob). In this case the Linux community rip and tear every detail by their own: the time took is never Linux or Linux's community but, put more plainly, just the company who took your money and said to you " oh! So you want to run this thing on your Linux install? Well, what about: fuck you! Is that OK?"
If you pick hardware/features from company that don't support your OS of choice, I don't see this to happened, not just in future, but ever. Just picture someone buying software/hardware for Sony's FreeBSD (PlayStation) and expecting it to work on Windows: this doesn't make any sense.
Linux is an insane exception to this because it's the Linux community of engineers who reverse engineered. It's not about wait for "Linux has to be ready", but be sure the money you thrown at your hardware are well spent.
If AMD company suddenly shut down, your hardware on Windows is just an unsecured brick which in few years become useless. On Linux it will be always supported, bug fixed and updated thanks to OpenSource drivers.