Comment by robby_w_g
5 days ago
I put up with so much Windows crap over the years, and Windows 11 was the final straw. It’s not even the gaming OS anymore as Linux feels snappier and more stable for running games.
5 days ago
I put up with so much Windows crap over the years, and Windows 11 was the final straw. It’s not even the gaming OS anymore as Linux feels snappier and more stable for running games.
After using Linux just about everywhere else, I moved my main desktop/gaming rig to Linux about a year ago. (The last Windows install I have is my retro PC.)
I work in e-waste recycling, and it's my first Windows-free job. A family friend called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her, partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux.
>I work in e-waste recycling
How does one get into this, preferably without having to be a yardie for a few years (I'm an electrician with a degree in chemistry)?
Fellow Win7Pro retro machiner.
I'm not sure if my story is useful for you: I had a friend working there when they had an opening. He recommended me, and the boss asked if I knew my stuff; he said yes. I'm struggling to remember how my friend got in there.
I work in the refurb division. I walk though the receiving and demanufacturing areas looking for things that would be worth our time to resell.
Though if you have a chemistry degree, you'd probably be more helpful to the people we sell scrap to. From what the boss told me, they're the ones who shred PCBs, drives, etc. and dissolve them in acid to extract metals and other materials, like one would with mined ore.
And our certifications require us to use buyers who don't turn around and ship things off to the third world for "processing": https://sustainableelectronics.org/welcome-to-r2v3/
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This was me after decades of running Windows. I'm now firmly on Debian (13).
I have been running Deb 13 on my primary workstation for a couple months, just as stable as Debian 12 I was running for years on my primary. I am able to do all of my programming work, virtual win/mac for compiling and able to play every Steam game I try with zero problems (BG3, CyberPunk, etc), all from a $500 mini-pc. Even bluetooth has had zero issue (which is usually a problem/pita)
What mini-pc if may know?
My work laptop used to be Thinkpad P1 before they enfored Dell hardware. The current win11 laptop needs to be replaced for stability issues, and I begrudgingly going to ask for a MacBook.
Until Linux has an alternative to anticheat, gaming on Windows is still king.
And until Linux implements similar abstractions in the Kernel akin to Filter Drivers in Windows, Linux will never have a proper anticheat.
I think “king” may be overstating it somewhat. While it’s true that there are some big titles with anticheat that won’t work on Linux, there are quite a few major titles that work fine, and in practice I’ve been able to use Linux as a gaming system for awhile now without issue. I primarily play Overwatch, The Finals, ARC Raiders, Rocket League and Age of Empires.
I think the success of the Steam Deck has really helped the situation, and the titles that are broken because of anticheat are not important enough to me to keep a Windows system around.
This is huge. I work in filmmaking and CG and a few apps still aren’t on Linux. I might just move anyway though. I’m so done with it.
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Linux has working EAC. Any software not working on Linux is a Policy decision by the seller, not lacking features on the buyer.
Oh and rootkit level EAC? Expect that to go away on Windows too when MS finally gets sick of Crowdstrike and that ilk causing self inflicted Denial of Service attacks on whole economic sectors.
They can’t kick Crowdstrike out without permission from the EU.
It’s one of the bigger failures of antitrust enforcement I can think of
(I can think of much larger screw ups involving lack of antitrust enforcement, to be clear.)
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The anticheat needs to be server-side to be credible, i.e. the game should be designed to only provide the information that client needs for fair play. I know this isn't easy, but it should be the goal.
Client still needs to know coordinates of opponents and other objects that could be in their view within the next 200ms, and once the client knows those, a cheating client can reveal opponent positions. You can't enforce that server side without adding huge mandatory lag to all clients.
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This is begging the question. Games on linux lack kernel anticheat because linux isn't very popular. Once linux is popular enough, then they will figure out a way to do anti cheat on it in a way that they consider acceptable. Valve already considers VAC good enough, because they want to support linux. Anti cheat on windows works the way it does because that's what's available on windows, on linux they'll figure out some other way.
Recent attacks on Ubisoft and Rainbow Six Siege have brought some interesting concern about the wisdom of having basically a kernel backdoor to the whole system installed and ready to be accessed in case of a company breach (not that this particular attack could allow that, but future scenarios might very well convert the user base into a botnet)
Not sure how much gamers with a modicum of awareness (already a minority) will care, but the risk is there. We could paraphrase that famous line to say that "The 'S' in 'Kernel anticheat' stands for Security".
> Until Linux has an alternative to anticheat, gaming on Windows is still king.
I'm glad none of the games that require this really appeal to me these days
To be honest, competitive online games are a small fraction of gaming and are more addictive than fun.
I don't mind Windows being relegated to a niche of the stuff that runs CS while Linux based OS works for every other purpose.
Anticheat is sloppy engineering
Not all gaming is multiplayer.
But I know what you mean. Another niche that really doesn't go well on Linux is VR.
Steam Frame coming this year, I’m sure Valve is throwing money at the Linux VR situation
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Anticheat blocks Linux deliberately. Its whole point is to check if you're running an unmodified copy of Microsoft Windows. Linux is not one, so unless it gets really really good at deception, it won't pass those checks.
It doesn't just check if a cheat process is running, because obviously cheats know not to let themselves be discoverable that way. Heck, there are hardware cheats now that simulate various PCIe devices but with extra sneaky DMA operations. (I bought one because it's a cheap way to have an FPGA in my computer)
It's a political problem, though. They don't pass Linux because few people don't buy their games just because they refuse to run on Linux. If people did do that, they'd have to change the anticheat, no matter the consequences. Probably higher cheating, since there is no true official blessed unmodified Linux system to compare against.
> Until Linux has an alternative to anticheat, gaming on Windows is still king.
Name one thing that needs it.
Anyone know if Helldivers 2 works on Linux now? Because I'd say if I can't stick with 10 much longer then I'm just going to format that partition.
Yes: https://www.protondb.com/app/553850
Personally I have been playing it on Arch Linux since release and it has always worked just fine, besides it being a deeply janky game regardless of OS.
Ditto. No issues at all that my friends did not experience as well. (Long download/patching times).
“Crashes for me every 10 minutes into a game.”
Funny enough, this is the game compatibility that convinced me that Linux was worthwhile switching over to.
With Arch Linux + the nvidia-open package, the Linux desktop experience is miles better than when I last tried in 2017 with Ubuntu
It worked on Linux since basically day 1, though I haven't played it in awhile so who knows if things have broken since then.
I've been playing it on linux since I started. Just run steam, install, Start.
Happy diving.
Thanks going to give it a try then. Since I already use VMs for Windows-required development activities, this may be the final days of dual booting for me.