While Valve will not be making and providing their own e-ink display for the Steam Machine, they have opened it up so anyone can now do it.

Quite literally the first sentence of the article. No, it has not. But there are now instructions to retrofit it with one.

They made a face panel with an e-ink display for their internal testing (display status, temps, speed etc). Said they would not sell it but they released how to make one yourself

Well, it's a convenient ereader, after all. Fits in any pocket.

And the 'countdown clock' animation for when its booting games or loading in levels. I wouldnt even mind if it randomly scrolled fallout ads while your playing 'sugar bombs', 'radaway', etc.

Firmware shouldn't care what OS the CPU is running as it's doing its own thing, running on an embedded processor of some sort on the device.

Though it can be used to lock out unapproved software if it needs an encryption key or relies on an undocumented interface they only told their windows driver writers about.

So I'm not saying firmware can't be used to lock linux out from being able to use certain hardware, just don't believe them if they try to play it off as they would need to write a special linux version of the firmware to make it happen; it's a deliberate lockout either via encryption or by making the information needed to implement it proprietary.

Though at least the latter case could be reverse engineered, especially if you can sniff the bus traffic.

Can’t you get backlit e-ink displays? Don’t kindles have them?

You have to be a member of the secret photographer society before they'll tell you. They are a secretive and judgmental bunch, saying things like "Hey! Get out of the frame, this is a professional photo shoot, not a photography tutorial. How did you even get in this studio? How would you like it if I randomly showed up at your job asking why you did the things you were doing?"

Turns out that last question is not a request for an info dump about my job.

intensive studio lighting? e-ink is reflective so good enough front light makes them surprisingly bright.