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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I doubt it’s going to happen, but a part of me prays that people will eventually get sick Microsoft’s increasing bullshit and it really can become the Year of the Linux Desktop. Gnome has genuinely gotten pretty great in the last couple years, and I think a lot of former Windows would genuinely like it if they gave it a chance, and virtually any Linux you install will have less tracking bullshit than Windows.

I suspect, though, people will realistically just migrate to Chromebooks, which I suppose are “Linux”, but not what I would consider the “Linux Desktop”

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I think people will sooner just start hard breaking Windows ISOs just to get rid of MS's garbage (arguably already the case if you use Rufus, which customizes the OOBE setup to already reject checks and tracking if you tick the boxes. They also have a checkbox to iirc disable the TPM check that's killing a lot of older device support because there's nothing in W11 that actually relies on a TPM, it's just an artificial restriction from Microsoft to kill old hardware), which will just lead to people doing what they've already been doing with Microsoft's stuff: pass it around like arcane knowledge that becomes increasingly difficult to find as it gets ingested by dodgy spam sites to the point where you're entering registry keys that either fix your problem or send everything to a third party.

Microsoft is a level of entrenched that Linux practically won't be able to beat for reasons that have little to do with technical viability and everything to do with legacy tools, having software that works with business formats (Office; any other office equivalent on Linux will still have compat issues and as long as those exist, they won't be a valid replacement - for much the same reason, although not fully locked to their platform, Adobe is a permanent barrier to Linux adoption) and video game DRM on popular titles keeping them basically in that position forever.

> Adobe is a permanent barrier to Linux adoption

I tried their online versions of Lightroom and Photoshop in Firefox on Linux, and I am quite happy to continue paying the subscription. It definitely takes less clicking there to remove an unwanted bird from the sky in a photo than it would take in GIMP or RawTherapee.

With PhotoGIMP, Gimp is pretty usable, and I’d dare to say it can handle like 90% tasks (if not 100%) an average Joe has. If not for this beer weird interface, that would be a pretty usable piece of software. There are aspects that are much better than Photoshop.

For basic usage (crop, edit screenshots) I go for Pinta and can recommend. It’s fast, and usable too. No need to throw even more money into Adobe.

Is not supporting TPM an issue in terms of some app compability though? I was investigating whether to upgrade an old computer from windows 10 to 11 and that was said somewhere online. I don't know if its true or fearmongering.

Office and some other “modern auth” apps can store MFA-equivalent tokens in the TPM to minimise the number of “tap the thing on the phone” prompts during single sign on.

I discovered this when I recovered a dead laptop’s disk image to a VM and the sudden absence of a TPM killed all of my cached Office credentials.

> I think people will sooner just start hard breaking Windows ISOs

Hasn't it always been the case? Nobody buy licenses besides companies right?

My uncle taught me how to torrent ~20 years ago, he was already cracking stuff for the whole family, he passed away but his legacy lives through me, I have never seen or heard about anyone buying a windows license in my entire life

You understand the situation better than most do here. The anti-cheat technologies built into competitive games is huge for me. I don’t enjoy gaming without it. That’s a big statement. When you simply don’t enjoy competitive gaming unless it’s on Windows.

Maybe it's time for the Linux version of WSL. Wine is already that for some subset of things - maybe the best way to run Win32 software in 2030 could be on Linux...

> there's nothing in W11 that actually relies on a TPM, it's just an artificial restriction from Microsoft to kill old hardware

untrue; bitlocker, an important thing for businesses, is far more secure with a TPM. Lots of things are more secure with a TPM, but people who think that Microsoft requires a TPM to sell more copies of Windows will never, ever, believe that to be the case.

Windows is a relatively small portion of Microsoft's revenue generation these days. Windows used to be the main breadwinner for Microsoft, but that has all changed now that Office is a subscription and Azure exists. That smaller portion of the revenue pie is why Windows has stupid shit like suggestions and tons of preinstalled crap: it matters a lot less who is put off by Windows than it used to.

The TPM is a genuinely good thing. Windows DOES use it. You can write applications which use it as well, if you want to. Short of any hardware bug in the TPM (which did happen once) it is capital-S Secure, as I understand it.

I had to invest a bit of time to get my NixOS install to play well with secure boot and the TPM.

Something Windows was doing for free (time-wise).

Edit: my point was agreeing the TPM is useful which is why I spent time making Linux "more Windowsy" in this case.

>I doubt it’s going to happen, but a part of me prays that people will eventually get sick Microsoft’s increasing bullshit and it really can become the Year of the Linux Desktop. [...] I suspect, though, people will realistically just migrate to Chromebooks,

Most people will stay on Windows... even with all the increasing annoyances from Microsoft... because there's too much important software that runs only on Windows.

And workarounds such as Linux Wine emulator or QEMU virtual machines are still not enough because lots of Windows software won't run in those environments for various compatibility reasons.

E.g. I can't migrate a friend to Linux because her embroidery software for her sewing machine has a USB hardware dongle for DRM. It doesn't work by passing it through as a USB device to a "Windows virtual machine" under Linux.

Other examples are Adobe Photoshop, CAD software like SolidWorks, etc. Too much inertia out there with Windows-only software.

If one does everything in a web browser (e.g. Google Sheets, Google Docs, etc), that's the type of usage profile where switching to Linux desktop is an easy no-brainer.

Ink/Stitch (https://inkstitch.org/) is a F/OSS option for a lot of embroidery machines... maybe not hers, but worth a look.

I've been using Ink/Stitch for awhile, and it has an extraordinarily steep learning curve compared to manufacturer specific software. Most of the information you need to run it safely without getting tangles or breaking needles is not published by sewing machine vendors, and you have to trial+error it with ink/stitch. You can get there eventually, but it'll take a lot of frustration.

> If one does everything in a web browser (e.g. Google Sheets, Google Docs, etc), that's the type of usage profile where switching to Linux desktop is an easy no-brainer.

Some streaming services don't work on Linux, the ones that do have degraded video quality, and it generally feels like streaming services are deliberately trying to break the Linux experience because it's associated with piracy.

You can fix thst fairly easily, with piracy.

That's a separate kind of failure.

> embroidery software for her sewing machine has a USB hardware dongle for DRM

While I don't have any sort of built up library of work or experience with a specific propriatary software, consider reccomending Inkscape + the Ink/Stitch extension to do embroidery designs.

I bought a Husqvarna Designer Jade, and the included windows-only software was a 'Lite' version, with an upsell for more advanced features (and pricing that was an additional 25-50% of the embroidery machine itself!), and I suspect a hardware dongle since I spotted references to it. I've been able to get by Ink/Stitch for the simple hobbyist jobs we've needed to do. The machine's USB port just expects a usb storage device, and the ink/stitch software can write the .vp3 files it needed to run a job.

I disagree with the reasoning "Because there's too much important software that runs only on windows."

My disagreement isn't because wine or proton exist, it's because most people only use a web browser. They check their email, watch tiktok and netflix, and write documents. 90% of people would have all their computing needs met by a basic chromebook.

No professional users exist in the world. All of these expensive expert tools are just illusions.

The thread was about "most people" and "90% of people." The claim wasn't that there's not a market for Windows.

Only 10% of people who use computers have a job with any professional requirements. All of those expert tools are faking their usage statistics and market share research.

You're going to need to cite your statistics about the specific Windows-only professional requirements and how many people need them instead of continuing the snark chain.

Here's an example to start: https://www.digitalsilk.com/digital-trends/mobile-vs-desktop...

> 15% of adults in the U.S. only use mobile devices to access the internet.

You're down to 85% already who even have the possibility of using your unicorn Windows-only software.

Yes, CNC machinists, mechanical engineers, and graphics designers exist. No, they're actually not the majority of the population. Also keep in mind this thread was talking about personal computers and not just work computers; just because some cashier's required to use a proprietary Windows XP program on their cash register doesn't mean they need to use Windows at home. Your argument is restricted to the small proportion of people who're either required or desire to do day job stuff on their personal PCs (of which not all of them actually need that highly specialized software you're referring to).

It was enough to get me to try Linux again, and it was pretty eye opening for me. My work laptop is a $3,200 USD Dell 5570 from 2023. I bought a Beelink SER5 on amazon on discount because it was an older model around $300. I installed Ubuntu on the SER5. I've used gentoo and other distros, I wanted to use the computer, not configure it, that's why I went with Ubuntu. That little Beelink box runs circles over the Dell, it's embarrassing. Granted, the Dell has a bunch of corporate stuff that kills the performance, but I'm just happier using the Linux box. Luckily JetBrains tools, VSCode, Obsidian work just fine, which is what I use it for most of the time. I did install a steam game for giggles and it works. Like Dr. Seuss says in Green Eggs and Ham "Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say." I still have a Windows tower though...

If you have the space on your main drive you could probably shrink the partition a few hundred gigs and dual boot linux on it.

Swap over whenever you need something on Windows, easy peasy.

I did consider that. I've had more than one experience of screwing things up. The $300 investment was an insurance policy against me doing that again :) . With how happy I am with a cheap box it might be something to consider when I have a free weekend to mess with it... Or when a Windows Update installs more stuff that I don't want.

I really like stuff to work. My tinkering days are limited.

I think linux should be on a dedicated drive. Theoretically Windows should coexist with other operating systems. Realistically it nukes dual-boot setups with great regularity. It is called "win" after all...

https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=windows%20breaks%20dual%...

Might happen. I told my entire family I would not support their windows installs past 10 and 11 is full of spyware. Half bought a mac and half opted to install Linux. IF all you want to do is a browser. Linux is honestly very easy to use.

I got frustrated dealing with my brother's laptop, threw Ubuntu on it, and never had to touch it again. Like, he got 4 or 5 extra years out of that clunker due to that switch.

He's really not a computer guy, and he picked it up no problem.

I pretty much said that to my wife; I told her that I will buy her a Windows computer if she wants, but I will not play sysadmin for it.

If she called my bluff I probably would have still helped her, but she was happy enough to use a Mac.

I know quite a few longtime Windows users who are interested in moving to Linux today because of what Microsoft has done to Windows 10/11. But I'm not too optimistic that they'll last long. Things still break a lot on my Linux devices (laptops mostly). I can't boot from a suspended state, I've been locked out of my system after an upgrade, and I've been tortured by cyclical dependency package conflicts. Getting a few pages out of my printer with the Linux drivers sometimes takes several attempts because it just locks up at random. KDE keeps breaking my two-monitor layout for some reason I haven't bothered investigating. I can get around those problems, but Windows, with all its problems, is more stable and hands-off. I use the Enterprise version and turn off as much garbage as possible, but that's a one-time annoyance.

With Windows 10 going out of support soon, I suspect there will be an increase in Linux adoption. After all, why throw out perfectly good hardware because of an arbitrary rule that Microsoft made? For me, I know that I'll install Linux for some relatives.

I have been a Linux desktop user for 20+ years. It is incredible how far it has come. There is nothing Microsoft can do that will drive the normies away though. Microsoft knows this and that is why we are where we are.

> It is incredible how far it has come

No argument on my end.

I have been running Linux since 2011, and so much more stuff is in the “Just Works” category, especially if you have AMD graphics. When I installed NixOS on my Thinkpad about a year ago, it was almost comical how easy it was for me; I had gotten used to having to waste an entire day messing with drivers and fixing issues in 2012-2015, so it felt kind of weird for stuff to work as expected immediately.

I am trying very hard to get my parents to use something like Linux Mint because the Windows 11 auto-update on my mom’s computer actually prevented it from booting (making me waste an entire day remotely having them flash a live USB so I could rsync over her files to me…thanks MS!), so this might be enough of a final straw for them.

I have tried switching family members over after malware incidents. The most success was setting my 80 year old grandmother up with Lubuntu. She had no issue picking it up. I don’t think she even really noticed vs Windows. Lasted a few years until she went to an iPad for accessibility reasons.

FWIW: I'm moving from my current win10 desktop to linux of some kind. I've been running mint on my laptop, in preparation, and I think I'm pretty comfortable with it (really hoping that the slowness that builds up over time has something to do with old laptop components, rather than the OS).

For me, it's always been the local account and network services. So long as I can run the thing with only a monitor and keyboard, I'm happy. The second I am required to have a net connection, or even a mouse, I will be looking for alternatives. It's 100% that simple.

About Gnome (Shell). I disagree it looks very pretty but the UX a huge step backwards from Gnome 2. Users are better off with KDE, XFCE or Mate.

Everyone says that it’s a step backwards, and even I did for awhile until I, you know, actually used it.

I don’t mean “install it and run it for an hour and declare it sucks”, but actually try and learn the way that the devs wanted you to use it, and stick with it for a week or two. When I did that, I actually found myself really liking it.

One of my biggest pet peeves in tech, and I am guilty of this myself, is when people make no effort to actually understand a product, and then declare it as “worse”. I feel like Gnome 3 was a victim of this; it was different than Gnome 2, different enough to where it arguably should have had a different name, but people just universally declared it as shit because it wasn’t exactly the same as Gnome 2.

Regardless, my overall point stands, replace desktop environment with any of the ones listed (though TBH I never have given KDE a fair shake so I can’t speak to it).

I tried many times to use Gnome3+ and I never understand the logic behind it.

Agreed. Gnome shell is actually super keyboard driven. But the KDE folks point out the fact that there isn’t a start menu to click and declare it bad UX. It’s just sad.

It may be keyboard driven, but especially under Wayland (see Talon [0]), it's almost unusable for disabled users. The situation was better a few years ago.

[0]: https://rykarn.se/2025/01/26/wayland

Agreed. Using Gnome at work for a few weeks convinced me to ditch my custom twm setup and move all my personal machines to Gnome as well. It is different, but once giving it time and a honest try I found its a far better experience than any other desktop environment I've worked with.

I installed linux mint xfce edition on a laptop with only 8 gb of ram, and while there were a few hiccups where I had to adjust, it's a breath of fresh air. Super low memory usage, no wayland nonsense, it. just. works.

> only 8 gb of ram

I still have fond memory of my brother upgrading his windows XP desktop to 1 GB RAM to play BF2142 and I was like "school hasn't even taught me that number yet".

What the hell happened to software development when "only 8 gb of ram" is used sincerely?

Oh man, don't even get me started. My first computer had a whopping 24 mb of memory. That computer browsed the web, with javascript. Now just my browser winds up eating ~ 3 gb of ram on a regular basis, with just youtube easily eating 600 mb of ram. That's more ram than I put in my first gaming pc back in 2003!

I built a AI / ML / gaming desktop last year, and I just said 'to heck with it, 64gb of ram!' Hopefully that'll hold me for a while

Oh, my first computer’s disk was smaller than this ram amount!

> My first computer had a whopping 24 mb of memory. That computer browsed the web, with javascript. Now just my browser winds up eating ~ 3 gb of ram on a regular basis, with just youtube easily eating 600 mb of ram.

Eh, that’s a massively disingenuous take when you consider capabilities. Web browsers back then could not do even 1% of what we can do now with modern browsers, where we can run damn near full fledged desktop level apps in a browser or with frameworks like electron. With that vastly increased power comes increased requirements, which is a complete non issue given memory is dirt cheap nowadays.

Yeah, for me XFCE > Cinnamon > Budgie > KDE.

To be honest, I think KDE is a better alternative to transition to from Windows.

Maybe it's just personal preference but I could also never really get the hang of Gnome.

I moved my parents from Windows 10, MS Office, Edge, Starpage.com to Kubuntu, ONLYOFFICE, Thunderbird, Firefox, qwant.com.

Most questions came because of the Outlook to Thunderbird switch. I can attribute zero questions to KDE. Though I said the new System is called Linux, they refer to it as Windows 11. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

I'm keeping my eyes peeled. Proton has made a LOT of progress, and most of what I do could be done on Linux these days. I think things are moving foward.

Proton and flatpak. The latter still has a lot of issues, but I recently come across a $200+ piece of commercial software (Bitwig Studio) that distributes as a flatpak, and it works great. And so is 99% of the desktop apps I'm using, Steam included.

Flathub is the best app store around. Can't wait until they allow selling paid apps (they had a few contractors working on it last I checked)

Feels good to be on Linux, man.

I don’t do anything with audio more advanced than what FFmpeg can handle, but I do edit video on occasion and I think Lightworks on Linux is actually pretty solid.

> but I do edit video on occasion and I think Lightworks on Linux is actually pretty solid.

DaVinci Resolve runs on Linux and has a free version.

There’s a free version of Lightworks as well actually. I ended up paying for the permanent license for the pro version when it was on sale a few years ago and it’s been pretty ok.

I so badly want to jump ship entirely, but there's several things holding me back. I do music production as a hobby and Ableton Live doesn't play nice with Linux. In fact it seems anything that is resource intensive without native linux support has some issues. I'm also an MS stack developer, so things like Visual Studio Pro aren't available (although I've been using Cursor IDE more and more these days). Lastly I have some games acquired through "the high seas" in which a work-around doesn't exist for compatibility.

Switch to Rider. It takes a second to adjust, but you'll end up with a better understanding of dotnet in general.

re. Games, are you sure proton won't work? I've got ~1400 games on steam, and only a handful have serious issues with proton.

Rider is pretty solid.

I did F# for years in Visual Studio Pro, and I feel like getting used to Rider on Mac took about twenty minutes.

Take a look at Bitwig. Developed by a team of ex-Ableton devs, it is the DAW-Live-should-have-become even at version 5.3, and version 6, which is in beta right now, will blow Ableton out of water. As soon as they add a microtonally aware piano roll like in Live 12, I'll have no reason to fire up Live other than to revisit old projects.

And yes it runs on Linux.

(Although truth be told, the CPU usage is somewhat higher on Linux than on Windows, even with low-latency kernel. Multimedia just doesn't quite shine on Linux yet.)

> the year of the linux desktop

At least on the gaming side, this is happening verrrrry slowly. It's almost entirely driven by the Steam Deck, which has around a 30% market share for linux users running steam. Since last year linux usage is up a solid percentile, and windows is down a similar amount. OSX and Linux both are making slow but steady progress against Windows' market share.

I don't think there will ever be a year of the linux desktop, but there might be a decade of slow transition towards it.

The future of desktop Linux is in a Windows-hosted VM, and some configurations (Home) might not allow even that.

We're a few years out from machines that, by law, cannot run an alternative OS on bare metal. As it is, Linux only runs on bare metal because Microsoft, the sole Secure Boot key authority for almost all OEMs, deigns to allow it.

I would think it’s in Microsoft’s best interest to keep it technically possible to install Linux on bare metal, if only to stave off potential anti-trust lawsuits. They would likely just make it very difficult.

Maybe, but the permissible versions of Linux will be certain specific allowlisted distro images from major vendors.

I'm basing this on Brazil's "Felca law", that contains stipulations similar to the UK's age-verification act, but extends to end-user operating systems, which must also implement auditable and secure age checks and access controls for minors. Presumably only operating systems that tie user accounts to online accounts for which a government ID is required, much like Windows 11, would be allowed.

Anyway, Microsoft is still trying to make ARM-based "PCs" happen, like "fetch". Per Microsoft's guidelines, ARM-based Windows "PCs" cannot disable Secure Boot and cannot allow addition of user-supplied signing keys, unlike x86-based systems which must allow these things; in short, the ARM systems boot Windows and only Windows. Microsoft gonna Microsoft, and if their Microsofting on this leads anywhere, it's toward a PC ecosystem locked down in its entirety.

> in short, the ARM systems boot Windows and only Windows.

I’ve not tried it myself, but a quick google seems to indicate people are running Linux on existing ARM64 laptops and there’s active development to try to achieve full support. For example, Ubuntu is installable on a number of off the shelf laptops, including one of Microsoft’s own Surface devices [0].

[0] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdrag...

I was wrong about booting only Windows, but this is because Microsoft still allows Ubuntu images to be signed with their master key. These machines are locked down to run only those systems Microsoft explicitly permits.

> it really can become the Year of the Linux Desktop. Gnome has genuinely gotten pretty great in the last couple years, and I think a lot of former Windows would genuinely like it if they gave it a chance

This comment could have been written at any point in the past 20 years.

I ran Enlightement + GNOME at work... on OS/2... circa 1999/2000. Wasn't even that bad. Also on linux of course.

Since then it comes down to someone wanting to go deeper than the surface and that's not for everyone, particularily if they are busy.

Pain can get the attention of even the busiest people so I really hope they keep making user suffer like this because that is the best driver away from windows and off the plantation.

I wouldn’t say 20 years, I think the tides turned somewhat when AMD opened up their drivers around ~10 years ago and really turned when Valve released Proton in 2018. Prior to that it was still kind of hard for me to recommend Linux to people.

I would love for it to happen. I really like my Mint/XFCE install, but more people migrating to Linux should probably mean better support from hardware and software.

I used to have Windows just for gaming. I tried Bazzite on the new PC that I bought. It works so well. I don't need a toy SO for my games any more.

As someone who's used Linux on the desktop (mostly Ubuntu) daily for about 15 years, I still couldn't conscientiously recommend it except to tech hobbyists or for limited use cases. It's shinier than ever but still a mess.

I think it’s generally pretty ok for people who primarily just browse the web.

My grandmother, who doesn’t know anything about computers at all, runs Linux Mint. She primarily uses Chrome, and someone set her up with Thunderbird and LibreOffice and she’s been totally fine with that. Keep in mind, this computer is old. When she bought it, it had Windows Vista installed and she’s still getting some life out of it.

I think Linux is in a weird place, where it’s great for people who know a lot about computers or nothing about computers. If all you do is browse the web and write email, Linux is perfectly capable for pretty much anyone. If you’re a software engineer, Linux has a lot of useful utilities and is perfectly ok to debug and fix.

The worst case is someone like my dad, who is kind of in the “prosumer Windows” camp. He doesn’t know a lot about computers but he knows enough to where he would want to dig down and change stuff, and doing that he would have to relearn everything from scratch if he moved to Linux.

Since the advent of Chromebook, it's my recommendation for the "elderly user who just needs email"-type use cases. Linux has so much that can go wrong.

She didn't want to buy a new computer. At that point options are pretty limited.

I really don't think it's as bad as what you're saying.

A huge problem is driver support, especially for gaming. Yes, it's significantly better than it used to be, but it's still a problem and it's not something the average user is going to want or know how to deal with.

I feel like your knowledge is a little out of date. Drivers on Linux are generally pretty decent now, especially if you use AMD or Intel graphics.

I had to do some recovery stuff on my mom’s laptop recently, which has an Intel GPU, and I just had it boot off an Ubuntu flash drive into Ubuntu desktop, and it worked fine, including WiFi.

On my main “game console”, I have an Nvidia card running in an eGPU case, and that was a pain in the ass to set up, so fair enough I suppose.

I made the move two years ago and it's going great. Currently running Debian 13. Gaming was the last thing for me but in my case, that's no longer an issue thanks to the Steam Deck.

I think we'll see a small uptick in Linux desktop usage, but nothing massive. Gamers are one of the biggest windows holdouts, and Linux is much better for that now (outside of kernel-level anti-cheat games, which we should be pushing back on anyway even on Windows - no game should require that level of rootkit to play).

More likely though, it's going to be "Eh, do I really need a laptop?" and we'll see even more people than we do already just using their phones and maybe an iPad.

I already see it with the non-tech employees at my work. Very few even have laptops at home. They have an iPad, maybe, a gaming console, and their phone. Sooo many people do almost all of their computing from their phones now.

Windows dominates the market because it dominates the enterprise segment. Enterprises demand accountability and servicing, things that philanthropic community projects that are mainstream Linux distros cannot provide, at least at the scale that Microsoft does.

I could maybe convince my wife to move to Linux, but she's a full-time student and some of the EDU spyware for remote learning won't run on Linux. Most of it supports Mac, but she's not a Mac person either and I don't really see much advantage in trying to get her to be one. For at least the near term, we need to have a Windows PC somewhere in the house so she can get her work done.

Much has been said about this before, but much as I would like to see a year of the Linux desktop, what I think we're going to see is a situation where other software vendors will increasingly hook into these bullshit "features" and people will continue to use what is pushed out to them even as it gets worse and worse out of necessity. Companies see Microsoft squeezing as much value out of a customer as possible, and they want in; that means less control, more tracking, more ads, online activation, centralized accounts, etc.

Yeah, I am a bit concerned about that too. I just started a second masters and I think at least at one point I need to use that bullshit Guardian Browser spyware to do exams.

I might need to keep some piece of shit Windows computer around just to satisfy that because I think VMs are explicitly not allowed.

I would honestly do so, but if I want to run games and music production stuff (like Cubase) I'm pretty much forced to be on Windows.

I don’t play much AAA stuff, but Steam+Proton has gotten very good; I almost never even bother checking compatibility anymore.

I don’t know anything about music production though.

The snags arise when playing games that use specific anti-cheat measures. Which is particularly annoying these days because developers are forcing them to be active when you're playing single player.

https://areweanticheatyet.com/

Yes, but it's the usual suspects. If you literally do not play those, admittedly very popular 5 or 6 games, it's a smooth sailing.

There's an entire world outside of AAA FPS games-as-a-service that require kernel-level anticheat.

The shortsightedness of this comment makes me think that there are hundreds of comments, exactly like yours that talked about dedicated GPU’s or direct X or any other technology that was dismissed as Dan don’t worry it’s only the big guys using it.

Do you know how valve used to make games and now it makes money? What happens when EA comes up with an amazing amazingly effective and cheap anti-cheat solution? And they offer it effectively for free to all indie developers, and it just works?

I don’t care, because I switched over to console for effectively this and other reasons. But Colonel level anti-sheet absolutely must be rejected.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, and why you're criticising my comment as short-sighted. The hegemony of Valve isn't eternal? What's that got to do with gaming on Linux today?

What exactly do you want people to do? I already don't buy the games that require kernel anti-cheat, which is the only power I have over the situation. I don't like that it exists either, but the reality is that unless someone reading here is a bigwig at a game publisher (unlikely), they can't reject these methods any more than they already are.

Microsoft will eventually be able to build attestation services into the kernel that will allow third-party software assurance that no unauthorized software is also running on the same machine, obviating the need for third-party kernel-level anticheat. For security, of course.

I love when companies institute a policy that is super beneficial to them for a dozen reasons and is plainly anticompetitive and claim it’s “for security”.

Why stop there then? I could pound a nail through my SSD and now it’s even more secure…it won’t even have the opportunity to write compromising data!

For that matter, instead of wasting all this money on transistors and metal and whatnot, why not just have a piece of paper that has the word “computer” written on it? Don’t get much more secure than something that doesn’t even execute code.

But those solutions don't allow Microsoft to take your computing capabilities away and then sell them back to you piecemeal.

Yeah, I don’t really play any multiplayer games outside of Minecraft and OG Doom on my own server, so it’s never been an issue for me but I realize I am a weird case.

Always-online single-player is supremely bullshit though.

> are we anti cheat yet

While anti cheats have obvious benefits and are a dealbreaker for some, be careful what you wish for. It's a slippery slope. One chess streamer famously had to set up multiple cameras pointing at him from different angles to combat cheating accusations.

The whole windows game mod scene shows just how much of a toy operating system windows is. Game mods are changing memory values on the fly on running programs and the OS allows it. These mods can just as easily read/modify Excel spreadsheets to get business health data. This is why corporate windows machines lock everything down. Crazy.

Originally anti-cheat was to detect the running of the mods but of course now are phoning home every thing you are doing on your computer.

When the next window image manager claims windows is secure ask them to turn off the virus scanner. They will look at you like your nuts.

And mods. Yes there are work arounds to get various mod managers working on linux, but they're honestly jank. Also any mods that are windows executables (version downgraders, engine optimizers, etc) don't work, even trying to run them through wine / proton.

So now my annoyance at windows does battle with my love of mods. I know the nexus folks are working on a new cross platform mod manager, but they have yet to support bethesda games (I suspect for some of the same reasons I had issues).

I usually deal with the mods and fan patches by using Protontricks, which allows running executables within a game’s existing Proton prefix.

I'm gonna have to look into this for sure.

The only games I have modded significantly are Minecraft and Lethal Company, neither of which gave me much issue on Linux. Haven’t tried modding any Bethesda games though.

What music stuff I've tested worked on Linux, but I am also not a very demanding user in that regard.

EDIT: by Linux, I mean Linux+Proton

I play a lot of sports games and they rarely work with Linux. A ton of my other multiplayer games I play also don’t work. Anti-cheat stuff often requires Windows.

That’s fair. I do wonder if Valve has a plan to fix this at some point in the future for their Steam Decks.

This is kinda on the game developer. There are anti-cheat systems which work fine on Steam Deck already, as long as the developer checks the box to allow it (as I understand it, it is just about that simple for EAC, one of the bigger anti-cheat options). But if the dev doesn't care, or actively doesn't want to support Linux like in the case of Epic, then Valve can't really patch around that.

Sadly, there is a fundamental incompatibility between successful anti-cheat systems and Linux, mainly that the user is fully in charge of their computer. Anti-cheats work by ensuring certain modifications aren’t made to the system the game is running on, and this relies on the operating system being trusted by the anti-cheat software. With Linux, a user is in full control and can just tell the kernel to lie to the anti-cheat system, completely bypassing it. In windows, there are things the user is not in control of and the anti cheat can be sure are correct.

Until anti cheat design changes entirely (and it may not be fully possible), the freedom and control Linux provides simply doesn’t work with them.

They could conceivably just restrict it to certain kernels and checksum stuff couldn’t they? Like restrict it to the last three Ubuntu LTS releases and the last N updates of the mainline kernel?

What I don’t know about this is a lot, so I will admit I am speaking out of my ass here.

Sure, but those specific kernels would require some sort of verification method to make sure they are actually the kernel it says it is (and not a modified version pretending to not be modified) which would require code signing by a trusted third pasty, use of Trusted Platform Modules, and restrictions on what modifications a user can make to their kernel.

All of these things are pretty much non-starters for Linux users. You might as well just use windows if you are going to go that route.

I would assume the most likely solution would be that the game can only run in its own highly specialized virtual environment with its own suite of checks and memory verification.

You know, design better games.

This is just a cat and mouse game with cheat developers. You can’t design software that is perfectly able to determine that is only running in an unmodified environment. This is a form of the halting problem; any software check you do could be faked.

Windows anti cheat gets around this by using code signing and Trusted Platform Modules, which Linux would never be able to support without Linux users giving up control of their own operating system, which is not something a Linux user would do.

Unfortunately some devs have added anti-cheat solutions that check and enable game launch for Deck’s hardware specifically, while blocking desktop Linux. Which is arguably even worse

I find it frustrating too.

Only thing I can guess is, some Devs might see game support as being complicated by the many variations of Linux and not want to see those tickets.

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