What irritates me is when games that don't even benefit from anti-cheat require it. Helldivers 2, for example. My dudes, it's a co-op game. My teammates and I are all on the same side! Moreover, the vast majority of people are gonna play with their friends, not randoms. And if your friend is using a cheat and it bothers you, you just ask him to stop. There's no reason for a game like Helldivers 2 to require anti-cheat at all, let alone the rootkit variety. And yet...

Elden Ring: Nightreign is also a co-op PvE game that has anti-cheating in it. The most common way people cheat is by fudging then items equipped to their character that slightly alter their stats and abilities. Since the game is rouge-like and all of your character information and equipment you can assign before entering the game is handled locally then all it takes is editing your save file which the game and server have no way of (or makes no effort to) detect.

Also, after a brief period, all of the cheaters disappeared because just repeatedly winning a PvE game get boring.

The best games with anti-cheat have an option to launch without using it, but just restrict what game types you can play. Playing with friends should be allowed without anti-cheat.

Helldivers might have more to do with preventing people from easily farming super credits versus game integrity.

Yep. I've seen quite a few free-to-play gacha games of the "Dress up your pretty princess in cool clothes and do cute activities in a relaxing, no-stress world." variety that have serious anticheat. There's no leaderboard, no multiplayer, it's totally singleplayer.

Why the serious anticheat? To try to prevent you from cheating your way to possession of all the cool clothes for your pretty princess.

burying the lede here killer. the answer is "we want to get paid"

the cool clothes cost $$$ or are randomally found. 0.0000004% chance to get, or pay money for better odds.

or pay lots of money to just get it.

It's also bad with games that have been sucked into the live service hell-vortex. I can't fire up a quick game of Madden against the CPU because EA has turned Madden into a multiplayer lootbox casino, so they chuck Linux-blocking anti-cheat on the whole damn thing, single-player and all.

What? Helldivers 2 works just fine on linux for me. Is this just a windows thing?

Not all anticheat fails to work in Wine/Proton.

The super invasive kernel-mode variants (that is, the sort that's in Valorant) flat out fail, and surely always will. It's my (perhaps mistaken) understanding that with some others (like Easy Anti Cheat), it's a choice made by the game dev as to whether running in Wine/Proton will be permitted or not.

That's not exclusive to kernel-mode anti-cheats. Even VAC, which is not kernel-mode, doesn't work in Proton: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/3225

> That's not exclusive to kernel-mode anti-cheats.

Sure, I didn't intend to suggest that it was. That's one of the reasons I mentioned EAC. Apologies for the confusion.

I'm a pretty prolific gamer, but at the start of the year I finally kicked Windows to the curb.

It's been fine. Surprisingly few games I'm interested in to begin with have anticheat that doesn't work on Linux, and it's comforting to know games aren't allowed to just shove trash into kernel space at will.

I dropped my Game Pass sub immediately after they upped the sub price and unplugged my Xbox Series X. I have a Bazzite machine, but I've had issues with the NVidia drivers and not enough patience to deal with it. So i'm currently ONLY using my Steam Deck OLED for gaming. When i want to play big AAA games at my desk (SD in docked mode), i'll use GeForce Now and all of it has been a wonderful experience, even the online "competitive" FPS games like BF6. Much better than my experience on either Windows or Xbox. I'll never go back... and i'm impatiently waiting on my Steam Machine!

If you play older games, Linux ironically works better than windows now for stability. The only game I have seen any issues with (note I don't really play multiplayer much) is the Harry Potter game, but proton eventually fixed that.

Yep same; have had Linux on my laptop for a decade plus, but finally switched my desktop over a few years ago, and I have no regrets. The real magic is that I no longer feel the need to do any research before buying a game; it usually just works. Granted, I don't really play competitive multiplayer games, so YMMV (but even that might be about to change if the Steam Machine sells well enough).

The thing is I still need Windows for music production.

Linux will never compete here.

They said this about gaming too... all it takes is Valve-esque sponsor

Until Valve starts shipping native SteamOS games, they were and are right.

Games are developed on Windows, using Windows APIs and development tools, and then Valve does the job studios don't see any value in spending development resources on, even though some of them use engines that also target GNU/Linux.

Talking about Linux gaming with Proton is no different than if Windows users would start talking about Windows being their favourite Linux distribution due to WSL 2.0.

It takes a stable ABI and a single target for apps. Don’t expect music production to ever show up for gnu/linux. Maybe Android

Bitwig is available for Linux, but I don't know what the limitations are.

A lot of VSTS aren't going to work even with tricks like WINE.

They often have complicated auth systems, etc.

I don't really want to learn a new DAW.

> They often have complicated auth systems, etc.

The paranoia audio devs have with piracy is insane. Ironically I think the worse your DRM is, the more your product should be pirated :)

It's often 20% DRM and 80% marketing.

Ohh cool, this plugin is "free". Looks like I have to register for an account and install a bunch of unrelated crap I really don't want.

The up selling never stops.

Then again. 30 years ago a lot of these trucks were straight up impossible without spending tens of thousands.

A lot of people give high praise to Yabridge, but I myself haven't tried using it for my existing VST library and just found alternative plugins that work with linux.

The sad thing is linux, like MacOS, is often vastly superior for audio routing and latency.

Personally I gave up all my audio productions tools that don't support Linux, but since music/audio work is just a hobby for me that's easier to do. I do miss my old DAWs (Ableton/Reason), and I miss a lot of VST plugins.

Not everyone can just re-base their setup on linux (for me Renoise & VCV Rack), but I can get plenty of joy out of a complete lack of Windows, license management crapware, invasive rootkit level DRM, etc.

Side benefit: it pushes me to get some more external hardware, but I have to do investigations on how some companies do firmware updates which often require MacOS/Windows or Chrome Browser (fucking webmidi looking at you Novation)

I've tried switching to hardware sequencers multiple times.

I just don't like it. I came of age making beats in Fruity Loops. I'll gladly drop another 200$ or 300$ just to make things easier.

I do have some dreams of making an open source sequencer that runs directly off a raspberry pi. Something like a fully open source MPC.

Some projects like this exist, but it's still more difficult than I'd like.

Maybe one day in the distant future Apple will make affordable laptops. A MacBook that takes a standard 2280 SSD would be amazing.

Never going to happen though. That's where the money is.

> I came of age making beats in Fruity Loops

Fruity Loops 4 was my first DAW, and yeah it has been hard to ever leave computer based production behind since then.

The only hardware sequencing that has ever clicked for me is the Polyend Tracker, which is just a tracker so I hesitate to even call it hardware sequencing. I also dig Elektron's sequencing, but its an entirely different headspace I have to spend time in to get used to everytime I fire one up.

I'm lucky that most of my projects only use 4-12 channels of midi/audio, because I can't stand massive projects with 40+ channels of things going on like some friends I've worked with. Hard to imagine trying to do that in hardware alone.

I actually have a Polyend Tracker.

It is a VERY weird device to say the least. I found myself not really enjoying it. The issue with hardware is when you want a final result mastering and splitting up tracks is like teeth extraction.

Vs using software where you can just export stems and hand it off to someone else.

However, with software you end up spending a lot of money on non tangable goods.

I can sell my Polyend. Selling a software license normally isn't possible.

Plus say you own a license to version 10.x. The day version 11.x comes out, the previous version might be worthless.

Vs vintage audio gear which might actually go up in value.

I was pretty surprised that the Polyend Tracker could spit out channel stems at least. I ended up selling mine when I needed some extra money to made ends meet, will buy one again eventually.

>However, with software you end up spending a lot of money on non tangable goods.

Yeah it sucks that this also keeps us locked into platforms for so much longer. I've been buying Reason updates for a decade, and own a bunch of Korgs VST releases of their hardware synths (Op-Six, Modwave, etc). If I can at least get the Korg stuff running on Linux one day that would be nice. It might be possible but I haven't tried.

>Plus say you own a license to version 10.x. The day version 11.x comes out, the previous version might be worthless.

Shout out to Renoise for being affordable and you get a whole versions worth of updates. Which after over a decade I still haven't had to pay again, but will gladly when the time comes. Plus I can even run it on a raspberry pi now.

> I don't need gaming that much.

Counter point: gaming is fun, and indy games are worth investing in. Voting with your wallet works better if you vote for behavior that's not user hostile, rather than only abstaining.

Just to be clear, the anti-cheat systems that support Linux run at the user level and don't require secure boot. Those kernel-level and secure boot restrictions only apply to a handful of games, and they all explicitly block Linux users anyway. For example, I've been playing Arc Raiders a lot recently in Linux, and the user-level EAC works just fine.

The user-level cheats are extremely bad. For example, Elden Ring uses EZ Anti-Cheat and it works on linux and that game is infested with PvP cheaters.

> ...Elden Ring uses EZ Anti-Cheat and it works on linux and that game is infested with PvP cheaters.

I would question how good Elden Ring's use of EAC actually is.

Given that -at launch-

* Players who were using a Japanese locale couldn't play the game unless they removed EAC

* Removing EAC substantially reduced the amount of incredibly noticeable hitching and stuttering

my hunch is that EAC was hastily slapped on very, very late in the process due to demands from some US-based PHB.

Lots of games don't need invasive anti-cheat. You can just play those. There are literally too many awesome games on the market to ever be without something great to play.

Many people have one or more Discord groups where someone will say "let's play Valorant tonight" and then everyone just installs it. Linux is fantastic for local gaming on a handheld or in the living room, not so much when your non-Linux friends pick the game.

All I really do on my Windows system is play games, and because of that I don't mind whatever draconian crap that's required to keep cheaters in check. It sucks, but not sure of a better solution.

I honestly don't understand why any game is even checking if secure boot is enabled.

If anything it's for the OS to care about that, not individual programs. Afaik, secure boot doesn't (on it's own) prevent the running of arbitrary software, so how is it actually preventing cheating?

It does mean that a signed OS image is running, so demonstrates that the kernel was unaltered at start-up.

It also demonstrates further levels of driver signing robustness.

I'm not really familiar with Secure Boot too much. Researching suggests that users can add their own keys so they are trusted by UEFI. Won't this resolve for linux users that must have secure boot on?

No, it's not a given that users can add their own keys - certainly in an anticheat scenario they probably couldn't, or at least if they did then key attestation would stop working.

It's usually a giant pia.

Some distros support it, some make it really difficult.

I like to distro hop. I'll often have to try two or three to get to a working system.

I've had no issues setting it up with Fedora and Ubuntu with kmods/Nvidia drivers. I just say I want it, and I have it. It's really easy now.

I was in a similar situation and ended up buying a PS5. It ended up being exactly what I wanted.

How's the mouse and keyboard story on PlayStation? The few shooters I play would greatly hinder me if I were stuck on a gamepad.

PS5 completely supports mouse and keyboard at a hardware level. It's up to the game though if they support it. The new Doom games don't support it on console even though M&KB are obviously supported on Windows for example. Other games do like the Quake 1 & 2 remasters. I think even Monster Hunter Wilds does if you really want to.

Not being possible for all games is a major detractor for me.

Just get a ps5. I went through the same adventure.

I did that for years and I recommend it as well. Pure linux desktop + console for games is a nice combo and a good separation of functions.

Of course... at this point I am back to having a PC with a beastly GPU and I boot Windows for games and CAD. It is hard to resist high framerate 4k gaming once it becomes a possibility, so now I need to figure out the secure boot problem for the occasional game that requires it.

A PS5 is an even more locked down system! There are vastly more games, many I already own, that work on Linux.

I don't personally have a problem with a system being locked down in general. I have a problem with my computer being locked down, or getting rootkits installed on it. So for me at least, playing those games on console is a good solution.

That's the seperation of concerns that drives me to a Switch alongside my computer. Though I'm by no means a "serious" gamer by most people's standards.

I'd much rather invest one powerful machine that cand do work and games instead of two that take up extra space and generate more e-waste.

I still play on my ps2 ... because consoles are linked closely to the games of that generation I would guess that they are tech that are on relative terms least discarded