This is great news for Linux users. Personally I have no desktop PC, only a laptop. So if I watch a video with software decoding it turns very hot. Therefore right now I use this unofficial version of Chromium: https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+archive/ubuntu/chromium-beta
I run Debian as my main OS so I have a Docker container with Ubuntu, where Chromium runs.
However this makes Chrome support hardware decoding on Linux which is long overdue. Now we just need Mozilla to do the same.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Chrome-VA-API-Nears