Comment by skydhash
7 hours ago
> 1. An equivalent of kernel level anti-cheats.
Ultimately, you can’t trust the user computer unless you go for the secure boot things backed by a hardware key. I’m sure there are multiple ways to bypass anti-cheats on Windows.
> 2. Immutability[…] It's distributing games to 12 different distros with a hundreds different configurations and a thousand customisations
Does it really matter? You can always ship a statically compiled games. There’s only one kernel that is greatly back compatible.
> 3. An enforced equivalent of .exe.
I think ELF is the official standard for executable binary. The competition is illusory. There’s nothing preventing anyone from distributing a self extracting archive that installs on /opt. Packaging on Linux is about your system consistency, not software availability.
> 4. Better hardware support
That’s not a linux issue. If the manufacturer is not keen on getting it in the kernel or making it open source, they can always create a binary blob and distribute some shim that loads it.
> Ultimately, you can’t trust the user computer unless you go for the secure boot things backed by a hardware key. I’m sure there are multiple ways to bypass anti-cheats on Windows.
Trials in Destiny 2 were a struggle before BattlEye, and the day BattlEye was enabled everyone suddenly forgot how to click heads. I put it "good enough" category.
I've been intrigued by the possibility of statically compiled games for Linux but I don't think they're the more compatible option. For typical games and players, the game needs to cooperate and interact with the window system. Even setting aside the X11 vs. Wayland issue, AFAIK neither have promised to maintain compatibility for static binaries.
Aren’t both wayland and X11 protocols? Sure there are toolkits, but they’re not hard requirements (based on the little I know).
2. Does it really matter? You can always ship a statically compiled games. There’s only one kernel that is greatly back compatible.
There's more to it than dependencies. It's a valid point.
> I think ELF is the official standard for executable binary. The competition is illusory. There’s nothing preventing anyone from distributing a self extracting archive that installs on /opt. Packaging on Linux is about your system consistency, not software availability.
I think he meant .MSI and not .exe, but the point remains and is still valid. Why are there multiple ways to skin the same cat?
> I’m sure there are multiple ways to bypass anti-cheats on Windows.
Of course, you can use DMA over Thunderbolt, but the bar is so high (cost, specialised hardware) that most people who cheat won't do it.
> Does it really matter? You can always ship a statically compiled games
This isn't completely viable, you can't statically link the graphics driver.