If you want to be part of the "platform", then it's not ready yet. Valve demoed SteamVR working on Linux a couple of months ago at Steam Dev Days, but it's not released yet. Given Valve Time, it could be anywhere from weeks to a year from now.
It's possible to write your own OpenVR driver with whatever headset, but it would be quite an undertaking.
If you're just messing around on your own, OSVR is n standalone open source
initiative (which also has SteamVR support) that is largely cross-platform but I haven't played with it.
Finally, last month Khronos Group announced [1] that they're going to be developing a joint VR standard with all the big players which should also advance VR towards being more cross-platform.
tl;dr: Unless you're building just for yourself, I'd wait or bite the bullet and install Windows for the duration. (I did the latter, sigh.)
It's possible to write your own OpenVR driver with whatever headset, but it would be quite an undertaking.
If you're just messing around on your own, OSVR is n standalone open source initiative (which also has SteamVR support) that is largely cross-platform but I haven't played with it.
Finally, last month Khronos Group announced [1] that they're going to be developing a joint VR standard with all the big players which should also advance VR towards being more cross-platform.
tl;dr: Unless you're building just for yourself, I'd wait or bite the bullet and install Windows for the duration. (I did the latter, sigh.)
[1] https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-announces-vr-stan...