Comment by matheusmoreira
19 hours ago
Let them stop functioning. Our computing freedom is far more important than video games. If they want to sell us games, they should have to acquiesce to our terms, not the other way around.
19 hours ago
Let them stop functioning. Our computing freedom is far more important than video games. If they want to sell us games, they should have to acquiesce to our terms, not the other way around.
Linux with EAC is better than Windows with EAC. A million users on a 95% free OS is better than 100k on a totally free one and 900k on a 0% free. And that's not counting the fact that the free distros you want will continue to exist because not everyone plays online games.
We shouldn't be forced to choose between a free system and one where we can play online games. They should just have to accept the fact they have no control and deal with it. Nobody cares how much it costs them.
If you want to see what happens when you compromise on this, all you have to do is look at mobile operating systems. They're all owned by corporations and governments, and it's enforced by hardware remote attestation. Install a custom system where you're in control? Attestation fails. You're banned from everything, you get no service anywhere, you are ostracized from digital society, you become a second class citizen. Mark my words: one day we will need remote attestation just to connect to the internet.
Not everyone plays online games, but most people need communications apps, banking apps, government apps. Our "free distros" will be nothing but paperweights soon if we don't find a way literally outlaw remote attestation. I think people are really underestimating what's truly at stake here.
Exactly.
I say this as someone who plays games that are significantly aided by remote-attestation-based anticheat: it's a beachhead that we will regret ceding.
You're also free not playing their games. I grew up hosting my own game servers so I'm no stranger to that, but I also enjoy games that are not compatible with that.
It also doesn't really matter if they have kernel stuff or not, unless you game on a different user a user space process can already read all your files and even memory of your processes.
We're also free to hack the games and make them work the way we want. Just like we can install uBlock Origin and kill advertising.
The computers are ours. We are the gods of our digital realms. Their software is running under our control. This "take it or leave it" nonsense doesn't really fly. Adversarial interoperability means there's any number of options available to us.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...
The notion that people would willingly give up this godlike power just to play online video games without cheaters is one of the saddest ideas I've ever come across. Gamers would reduce our personal computers to consoles without a shred of guilt. I barely have words to express how I feel about that.
Modding and such is fine, even in MP games when expected. But that's not the reason for protections were talking about, cheating is. People are breaking the social contract of competitive games. Booting into a special environment just for competitive games would allow both to coexist.
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> even memory of your processes
That's not a thing on the default config of any mainstream distro I'm aware of; everyone restricts attaching a debugger and similar to root by default these days.
For Linux no, not for the last 15 years or so. For windows yes, still possible.
But AC is kinda useless on Linux anyway, might as well have none.
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