Linux doesnt have games that install kernel-level spyware under the guise of anti-cheat. Hopefully never will, but I don’t underestimate gamers who love think spyware is a good idea. Stay away from linux if you want kernel anti cheat please, its ruining computers
What’s hilarious is that is par the course on windows to run Steam as an admin. In fact that fixes a ton of bugs for people, so any executable the steam process spawns, like game executables, has admin rights as well.
No I think you got the message of what they were saying correct. Linux doesn’t have kernel level anti-cheat at the moment, and they’re saying that if you are a proponent of it, then don’t use Linux because it’s something we’d like to continue not having.
There are layers of abstraction between the kernel and the userspace, and few applications need kernel level access. Anti-cheat poking around in the kernel is very invasive. I know plenty of people who equate it to spyware, myself included.
Yeah, there’s anti cheat software that doesn’t run in the kernel. You can bypass that and still cheat, but if you’re insistent you can do that even with kernel-level anti-cheat. There’s a whole big debate on this, lots of differing opinions.
How is device support? Direct drive steering wheels, gamepad, VR, status LED or info displays (ie. Making your keyboard glow red on low health) and bunch of other things like my Sound Blaster G6
I can’t say for certain if steering wheels or LEDs work, but I know gamepads work better than on Windows, especially Sony ones. DuelSense works perfect. It only works if plugged in but as far as I’m aware that’s how it works on Windows.
Which one? Support varies wildly depending on manufacturer.
gamepad
I have never seen a gamepad that doesn’t work on Linux. You may not be able to update their firmware if they only provide a Windows tool but they work perfectly fine.
VR
Valve Index and HTC Vive work out of the box. SteamVR is pretty rough in Linux and plagued by issues but it works.
For any other headset you will have to depend on community support. Some work, some don’t.
Which ones? They usually use completely proprietary protocols.
Sound Blaster G6
It will work like any other bog-standard sound card has for years. You will lose any features that are custom to the sound card (dialogue mode, virtual surround, equalizer, …) but those are rarely necessary because there is lots of other software that achieves this for every sound card.
I recommend you boot Linux from USB and take a look. No need to install anything, just boot from USB and take a look if your hardware works.
Status LEDs/displays likely won’t work unless the manufacturer makes a Linux driver, publishes driver documentation, or it’s a super popular device. Reverse engineering USB is possible but very much a passion project. Most gamer hardware hasn’t had to care about Linux users till the last few years. Input devices at least are usually normal HID devices which are standardised.
Hit and miss since those tend to not have actual standards and generally do their own thing. If it’s popular, there’s a decent chance someone has reverse engineered it and there’s at least partial support (mostly applies to simpler things like steering wheels), but there will be concessions to make until device manufacturers officially support Linux.
If you’re willing to replace equipment, there’s something that works for most of those categories, if not all.
me since dec 2024, i usually use Linux for gaming(thank you Valve for Proton) but i may still spin up a Windows VM to flash roms to my Samsung Phone(grimlers fork sucks).
apps are also pretty alright on Linux but would love this area see some improvement.
i also feel like FOSS works the best on Linux cause duh Linux itself is foss, incl apps.
It’s great that the number of games playable on Linux is rising. But the lack of mods is stopping me from switching. I tried to play Civilization 6 and it’s hard to play it without many quality of life improvement mods.
It’s definitely doable but I won’t pretend it’s a pleasant process compared to what people are used to with Windows modding, and Wine overhead can mean a large unoptimised mess of Stardew Valley/Rimworld/Skyrim mods are going to perform worse.
Can confirm the viable gaming. Some need fairly annoying workarounds that require some regular fiddling to adjust (looking at you EA/Origin with your silly launcher), but in the end it’s definitely playable.
Lots of off topic comment threads so I don’t mind adding my own: going to make the Linux dive here soon and just had a general question on VR. I recently got a mostlySteam setup (sensors / controllers) with a Vive Pro 2 headset. Overall is VR supported? Is it limited to certain headsets? I was thinking of getting a Bigscreen Beyond 2, if that makes a difference. Any info appreciated.
I’m trying to get into Linux atm. Working at the kinks and work flow. I will dual boot for the exception that I really want to play that doesn’t run on Linux.
I don’t have much of a choice. I don’t have another system to work on and I’m not ready for Linux to be daily driver yet.
I’ve installed on a separate SSD.
Edit: Sorry, I just saw and remembered what I wrote originally lol nevermind… I will keep that in mind going forward. Thanks.
Strangely enough, “Windows always fucking up my dual boot setup” is what caused me to drop Windows for good about a decade ago. And Linux gaming has come on absolutely leaps and bounds since then.
if i cant run something at linux i’ll just do without it. Might try virtual machine if its something really crucial but might not care to even bother. Fortunately any games i know that will not run are kind of games that i wouldnt want to touch anyway.
i wonder how these numbers change if you weight by active players. like sure, Shooty Guns 2 (2008) running on linux is a good thing, but if it has a grand total of 5 people in the world playing it, it won’t really do much for linux adoption as long as games like league of legends, apex legends and fortnite still don’t work
(for the record i don’t play any of those games and i’ve been happily daily-driving linux with no windows intervention for the last 4 year)
Very fair argument. This way the statistics would most likely be considerably worse. Though personally, I couldn’t care less about games like League, Fortnite or FIFA. A case could be made thay they’re almost always harmful, so them being unavailable isn’t an issue.
Can’t seem to find it all I get is either the LA shootings of 1992 or knock off games from itchio. Mind sending me an Internet archive page/ pointer to this franchise?
I’ve yet to find a game that I couldn’t play (though knowing me I probably forgot one or two). It’s mainly mods that I’ve not been able to implement, as some of them require running an exe file.
However I’ve had very helpful people tell me I can do all that in a wine instance or something similar so mainly it’s just my own laziness (and lack of understanding about how to “do it in a wine instance”) that’s holding me back from installing fancy modpacks or playing the latest Stalker gamma version.
Also i don’t play multiplayer stuff so the anti-cheat thing issues don’t usually apply to me. So there’s that.
Lutris for mods. You can point it at the game exe downloaded by steam in many cases (not all), and then run arbitrary exes inside the same wine prefix.
I’m installing Mint for the first time at this very moment. So far, it’s easier than I anticipated. Fuck You Microsoft.
Edit: bro, firstly, what the fuck and where did all this performance come from?!?! I vastly underestimated how many resources windows was hogging. I downloaded Steam (easy-peasy) and then Project Zomboid just as a test. This game runs like butter now. I was having major problems with it before. To the point I basically stopped playing. I know its just one example but I haven’t had my machine run this well in several years, I feel. Also, got Spotify running. Super easy. I need to figure out how to get my VPN set up (ProtonVPN) but so far, I’m kind of in shock. I can’t wait to actually dig in and see what I can do with this new setup.
This is just how I felt when I first switched, also to Mint. I’ve experienced it a couple other times too when switching from some proprietary application to the FOSS option.
I like to describe it as feeling the different priorities of the teams working on each project. When one is made by passionate users who care about it being good software for its purpose, and the other is designed by a committee to hit as many different corporate metrics as possible, it shows.
Windows 10 did that to us. My work workstation and my wife’s laptop suffered with W10, so I searched alternate OS and found Linux. Luckily our CAD software had a Linux version and I got productivity back.
My wife’s 2010 laptop on w10 was not usable. Its super fast with Linux. Faster than my work issued brand-new Lenovo laptop with W11. The only performance problem would be rendering video or other hardcore tasks.
It’s honestly surprising how bloated Windows has become, and for no clear reason either. Even with all of the obvious bloat disabled and resource-intensive features turned off there’s still a significant overhead, it’s just so constant that you don’t notice it. Then you load up Linux on the same hardware and realize what you’ve been missing.
If you have a look at phoronix.com (probably the best linux news site) you can find loads of articles on linux gaining 0.2% of performance in some superspecific workload.
The Linux performance is what happens when thousands of people do these kinds of micro improvements for decades.
In comparison Windows is what happens if everyone follows the new cool trend and tries to lamd the next big thing.
Yeah, once you get the basics of BASH down Linux becomes really easy.
Open up your Console/Shell/Terminal and type “help” it will give you the list of standard commands that let you navigate the shell.
cd = change directory
mkdir = make directory
nano = edit file
rm = remove file
rmdir = remove directory
sudo = run command as administrator/root privileges
And once you get that going you’ll eventually get the options for each command, for example rm -rf is remove a file forcefully (the -f option), if you apply that command to directories it will remove anything within those directories with recursion (the -r option).
You also don’t need to cd into a directory if you want to edit a file in it. For example nano /home/user/Desktop/SomeRandomFile.conf
I use a quest 2 headset through my desktop via desktop streamer into steam VR into VRchat. Would this all work on linux? it’s already a pain on windows.
There were huge numbers of people that wouldn’t move to Linux because it didn’t support all of their games. Now it does, and lots of people are moving.
There are lots of people that won’t move to Linux because they have a random bit of hardware that’s not supported, or a highly-specific bit of software they need to do their job that only runs on Windows. The manufacturers wouldn’t support Linux because not enough people used it. Ah, but now we have all the gamers, so there are quite a lot of people using it.
Each domino that falls encourages the rest. Steam Linux users are more than 3x Steam macOS users, and we’re not that far from overtaking it for general desktop usage. In some regions, that’s already the case, and while the Windows 10 exodus can move to Linux easily, they’d need to buy new hardware fo use the Mac operating system. Not many companies would question providing Apple support; once Linux has a comparable share, it would be foolish to leave that out of consideration as well.
The problem is that he biggest networked games, I.e. those with the most players online, won’t work on linux. Until fortnite or apex legends or LoL allow linux machines, people will be stuck on windows so they can still play with their friends. The same thing happens with most of the sports games except those players are almost entirely on console, and they are locked in there.
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Linux doesnt have games that install kernel-level spyware under the guise of anti-cheat. Hopefully never will, but I don’t underestimate gamers who love think spyware is a good idea. Stay away from linux if you want kernel anti cheat please, its ruining computers
Breaking News:
This just in new game requires sudoers access to play!
What’s hilarious is that is par the course on windows to run Steam as an admin. In fact that fixes a ton of bugs for people, so any executable the steam process spawns, like game executables, has admin rights as well.
You are not in the sudoers file, this incident WILL BE REPORTED. ಠ_ಠ
I mean companies could probably already create perfectly good kernel level anticheat on Linux if they really wanted to through eBPF programs.
That would not require permanent changes to the Kernel and games would only need root rights at install time. (Like most software already does)
I wouldn’t even have a problem with that kind if a solution.
I’m confused, first you say that Linux doesn’t have anti-cheat, and then you say you should stay away from Linux if you want anti cheat.
No I think you got the message of what they were saying correct. Linux doesn’t have kernel level anti-cheat at the moment, and they’re saying that if you are a proponent of it, then don’t use Linux because it’s something we’d like to continue not having.
There are layers of abstraction between the kernel and the userspace, and few applications need kernel level access. Anti-cheat poking around in the kernel is very invasive. I know plenty of people who equate it to spyware, myself included.
Can you prevent cheating without it?
Yeah, there’s anti cheat software that doesn’t run in the kernel. You can bypass that and still cheat, but if you’re insistent you can do that even with kernel-level anti-cheat. There’s a whole big debate on this, lots of differing opinions.
Linux doesn’t have kernel level anti cheat and I hope it remains that way, but I fear my opinion will be in the minority soon if not already.
Who would be against that? And why?
Kernel level anticheat. There’s very effective anticheat that is not kernel level and therefore works fine on Linux.
https://www.practical-tips.com/games/what-are-kernel-level-anti-cheats-and-how-do-they-work-all-the-info/
Ah thanks!
No worries buddy 👍
I am a PC gamer and I exclusively use Linux. It’s completely viable for gaming, I can say for a fact.
How is device support? Direct drive steering wheels, gamepad, VR, status LED or info displays (ie. Making your keyboard glow red on low health) and bunch of other things like my Sound Blaster G6
I can’t say for certain if steering wheels or LEDs work, but I know gamepads work better than on Windows, especially Sony ones. DuelSense works perfect. It only works if plugged in but as far as I’m aware that’s how it works on Windows.
Which one? Support varies wildly depending on manufacturer.
I have never seen a gamepad that doesn’t work on Linux. You may not be able to update their firmware if they only provide a Windows tool but they work perfectly fine.
Valve Index and HTC Vive work out of the box. SteamVR is pretty rough in Linux and plagued by issues but it works.
For any other headset you will have to depend on community support. Some work, some don’t.
There’s lots of info on https://vronlinux.org/
Which ones? They usually use completely proprietary protocols.
It will work like any other bog-standard sound card has for years. You will lose any features that are custom to the sound card (dialogue mode, virtual surround, equalizer, …) but those are rarely necessary because there is lots of other software that achieves this for every sound card.
I recommend you boot Linux from USB and take a look. No need to install anything, just boot from USB and take a look if your hardware works.
Status LEDs/displays likely won’t work unless the manufacturer makes a Linux driver, publishes driver documentation, or it’s a super popular device. Reverse engineering USB is possible but very much a passion project. Most gamer hardware hasn’t had to care about Linux users till the last few years. Input devices at least are usually normal HID devices which are standardised.
Hit and miss since those tend to not have actual standards and generally do their own thing. If it’s popular, there’s a decent chance someone has reverse engineered it and there’s at least partial support (mostly applies to simpler things like steering wheels), but there will be concessions to make until device manufacturers officially support Linux.
If you’re willing to replace equipment, there’s something that works for most of those categories, if not all.
Me since 2017 when I stopped dual booting. Never looked back thank goodness
I kept a dual boot windows 7 around for a loooong time. I booted it up like once every 2 years or something.
I have you beat by a few years.
me since dec 2024, i usually use Linux for gaming(thank you Valve for Proton) but i may still spin up a Windows VM to flash roms to my Samsung Phone(grimlers fork sucks).
apps are also pretty alright on Linux but would love this area see some improvement.
i also feel like FOSS works the best on Linux cause duh Linux itself is foss, incl apps.
It’s great that the number of games playable on Linux is rising. But the lack of mods is stopping me from switching. I tried to play Civilization 6 and it’s hard to play it without many quality of life improvement mods.
You can mod games on Linux though, some just need a bit of fiddling, just look it up. Never tried Civ 6 but people say it’s possible.
It’s definitely doable but I won’t pretend it’s a pleasant process compared to what people are used to with Windows modding, and Wine overhead can mean a large unoptimised mess of Stardew Valley/Rimworld/Skyrim mods are going to perform worse.
Let’s see some benchmarks.
Can confirm the viable gaming. Some need fairly annoying workarounds that require some regular fiddling to adjust (looking at you EA/Origin with your silly launcher), but in the end it’s definitely playable.
Lots of off topic comment threads so I don’t mind adding my own: going to make the Linux dive here soon and just had a general question on VR. I recently got a mostlySteam setup (sensors / controllers) with a Vive Pro 2 headset. Overall is VR supported? Is it limited to certain headsets? I was thinking of getting a Bigscreen Beyond 2, if that makes a difference. Any info appreciated.
Usually is limited by headset/controllers support. Take a look at Linux VR Adventures Wiki for compatibility.
Thanks!
Does anyone know if it’s possible to run VR games on Linux? I’d love t ditch Windows for the gaming pc…
This is great but my MSI laptop wasn’t very compatible with Linux.
Like how? You may need some proprietary firmwares.
nice
Some shitty games will hold out, but as long as the majority works better under Linux, I’m fine with it.
I’m trying to get into Linux atm. Working at the kinks and work flow. I will dual boot for the exception that I really want to play that doesn’t run on Linux.
Be careful, windows can fuck up some dual boot setups and make the Linux side worse
I don’t have much of a choice. I don’t have another system to work on and I’m not ready for Linux to be daily driver yet. I’ve installed on a separate SSD.
Edit: Sorry, I just saw and remembered what I wrote originally lol nevermind… I will keep that in mind going forward. Thanks.
If you are able to i think ensuring they’re installed on different drivers alleviates most issues
Thankfully that should prevent most issues of Windows fucking up dual-booting
Strangely enough, “Windows always fucking up my dual boot setup” is what caused me to drop Windows for good about a decade ago. And Linux gaming has come on absolutely leaps and bounds since then.
if i cant run something at linux i’ll just do without it. Might try virtual machine if its something really crucial but might not care to even bother. Fortunately any games i know that will not run are kind of games that i wouldnt want to touch anyway.
That’s what I’ve done. I have a windows VM but I don’t even bother spinning it up anymore
i wonder how these numbers change if you weight by active players. like sure, Shooty Guns 2 (2008) running on linux is a good thing, but if it has a grand total of 5 people in the world playing it, it won’t really do much for linux adoption as long as games like league of legends, apex legends and fortnite still don’t work
(for the record i don’t play any of those games and i’ve been happily daily-driving linux with no windows intervention for the last 4 year)
Very fair argument. This way the statistics would most likely be considerably worse. Though personally, I couldn’t care less about games like League, Fortnite or FIFA. A case could be made thay they’re almost always harmful, so them being unavailable isn’t an issue.
I seem unable to find this Shooty Guns 2 (2008) you speak of.
I’m pretty sure that’s a mock-buster title so they don’t piss any fandom off.
It’s the sequel to Shooty Guns (1992), one of the first games to come in two separate floppy disks.
Can’t seem to find it all I get is either the LA shootings of 1992 or knock off games from itchio. Mind sending me an Internet archive page/ pointer to this franchise?
I’ve yet to find a game that I couldn’t play (though knowing me I probably forgot one or two). It’s mainly mods that I’ve not been able to implement, as some of them require running an exe file.
However I’ve had very helpful people tell me I can do all that in a wine instance or something similar so mainly it’s just my own laziness (and lack of understanding about how to “do it in a wine instance”) that’s holding me back from installing fancy modpacks or playing the latest Stalker gamma version.
Also i don’t play multiplayer stuff so the anti-cheat thing issues don’t usually apply to me. So there’s that.
Lutris for mods. You can point it at the game exe downloaded by steam in many cases (not all), and then run arbitrary exes inside the same wine prefix.
I’m installing Mint for the first time at this very moment. So far, it’s easier than I anticipated. Fuck You Microsoft.
Edit: bro, firstly, what the fuck and where did all this performance come from?!?! I vastly underestimated how many resources windows was hogging. I downloaded Steam (easy-peasy) and then Project Zomboid just as a test. This game runs like butter now. I was having major problems with it before. To the point I basically stopped playing. I know its just one example but I haven’t had my machine run this well in several years, I feel. Also, got Spotify running. Super easy. I need to figure out how to get my VPN set up (ProtonVPN) but so far, I’m kind of in shock. I can’t wait to actually dig in and see what I can do with this new setup.
This is just how I felt when I first switched, also to Mint. I’ve experienced it a couple other times too when switching from some proprietary application to the FOSS option.
I like to describe it as feeling the different priorities of the teams working on each project. When one is made by passionate users who care about it being good software for its purpose, and the other is designed by a committee to hit as many different corporate metrics as possible, it shows.
https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.protonvpn.www You are welcome :)
That did it! Thank you so much!
Windows 10 did that to us. My work workstation and my wife’s laptop suffered with W10, so I searched alternate OS and found Linux. Luckily our CAD software had a Linux version and I got productivity back.
My wife’s 2010 laptop on w10 was not usable. Its super fast with Linux. Faster than my work issued brand-new Lenovo laptop with W11. The only performance problem would be rendering video or other hardcore tasks.
It’s honestly surprising how bloated Windows has become, and for no clear reason either. Even with all of the obvious bloat disabled and resource-intensive features turned off there’s still a significant overhead, it’s just so constant that you don’t notice it. Then you load up Linux on the same hardware and realize what you’ve been missing.
If you have a look at phoronix.com (probably the best linux news site) you can find loads of articles on linux gaining 0.2% of performance in some superspecific workload.
The Linux performance is what happens when thousands of people do these kinds of micro improvements for decades.
In comparison Windows is what happens if everyone follows the new cool trend and tries to lamd the next big thing.
BASH will be your best friend for any Linux distro.
Ill definitely look into this.
Yeah, once you get the basics of BASH down Linux becomes really easy.
Open up your Console/Shell/Terminal and type “help” it will give you the list of standard commands that let you navigate the shell.
And once you get that going you’ll eventually get the options for each command, for example
rm -rfis remove a file forcefully (the -f option), if you apply that command to directories it will remove anything within those directories with recursion (the -r option).You also don’t need to cd into a directory if you want to edit a file in it. For example
nano /home/user/Desktop/SomeRandomFile.confProtonvpn has a flatpack. Check your distro’s app store for it.
I love to hear it, but only about 70% of mine work on Linux, so I’m stuck with a dual boot. 99% Linux is better than no Linux, at least.
Have you tried wine bottles? I had real problems getting anything to work right till I found that app.
Yeah, I’ve tried all of the compatibility programs.
Some will run using those, but in a very, very sluggish way.
I use a quest 2 headset through my desktop via desktop streamer into steam VR into VRchat. Would this all work on linux? it’s already a pain on windows.
I think virtualdesktop works, but don’t quote me on that.
This page says it works, but it also might be a pain to setup.
I think it used to work officially, but last I heard they dropped official support.
There are still lots of reasons that stop people from jumping 100% into Linux. Gaming is less and less one of them.
True, but network effects are important to that.
There were huge numbers of people that wouldn’t move to Linux because it didn’t support all of their games. Now it does, and lots of people are moving.
There are lots of people that won’t move to Linux because they have a random bit of hardware that’s not supported, or a highly-specific bit of software they need to do their job that only runs on Windows. The manufacturers wouldn’t support Linux because not enough people used it. Ah, but now we have all the gamers, so there are quite a lot of people using it.
Each domino that falls encourages the rest. Steam Linux users are more than 3x Steam macOS users, and we’re not that far from overtaking it for general desktop usage. In some regions, that’s already the case, and while the Windows 10 exodus can move to Linux easily, they’d need to buy new hardware fo use the Mac operating system. Not many companies would question providing Apple support; once Linux has a comparable share, it would be foolish to leave that out of consideration as well.
The problem is that he biggest networked games, I.e. those with the most players online, won’t work on linux. Until fortnite or apex legends or LoL allow linux machines, people will be stuck on windows so they can still play with their friends. The same thing happens with most of the sports games except those players are almost entirely on console, and they are locked in there.