Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11 - Ars Technica

Time will tell, there's progress towards proper open source drivers for Nvidia now, but I don't know how long that will take to catch up.

I'd settle for that solution anyways, but only as long as users can still mix and match kernels (one for secure boot and games that require anti-cheat, and another for custom hardware)

Which is why I prefer the MacOS approach better - instead of relying on the developer adding a hypervisor, Apple uses binary signatures for all the relevant system files which are attested via something similar to Secure Boot, plus an Apple-provided API for runtime attestation, to ensure that the system has not been touched since boot. I suspect that Valve's assistance in making Arch Linux builds reproducible is pointing towards that goal.

Considering that Vanguard has already been bypassed at least once (see dailydarkweb.net/vanguard-bypa… ), I think somebody must already know if the tool is ultimately malicious or not. Problem is, the somebody that knows has a vested interest in *not* disclosing any details, being a cheat bypasser and all.

Yeah it is suspicious. Would be interesting if someone tried to decompile them to try and see if they hold any secret or malicious functions. I know that many of them have serious security vulnerabilities as is.

I'm pretty sure it's mandatory that any Chinese owned company has to have backdoors and provide access to the government. I've read interviews where people talked about running companies in China, and they would talk about how government employees would come and install hardware in all their server rooms, and they couldn't touch any of it or do anything about it.

I don't think it's a coincidence that most kernel anti-cheat are developed/used by companies that are at least partially Chinese owned.

The fundamental issue with kernel anticheat is you're giving full control and unlimited monitoring of your computer to a company, and trusting them to not abuse that access. Being able to see some processes it runs isn't any kind of guarantee that those processes aren't doing something undesirable, and doesn't guarantee that there aren't other processes doing things secretly.

EAC should be one of the better ones, but it's still a question of:

1. Do you trust Epic Games to act in your best interest?

2. Do you trust Epic Games to dispose of your personal info and not sell it or use it? (remember, it's not a question of whether your info is being collected, anticheat programs are intended to gather a lot of info on everything you do on your PC so it can be confirmed if you're cheating. So you are being spied on, it's just a question of whether they delete the data after harvesting it or decide to sell/use the data already on their servers that you consented to giving them when you accepted the game's ToS).

3. Do you think that Tencent's partial ownership of Epic impacts either of the above questions?

4. Do you think that NSA and other government agencies are going to use the anticheat to spy on your computer, either through legal requirement or through undisclosed backdoors?

Some anti cheat work better than others, and it depends on how much you'd like to play the game that needs it. Plenty of games without.

EAC does not hide its process and you can see it running. If it's not, perhaps it has left files behind, but that's a Windows issue more than EAC's.

The anti-cheat programs provide uninstall options, but you're basically just assuming they actually uninstalled and didn't leave anything behind. You don't have any control over whether it actually fully removes itself or not, it's very difficult to verify that nothing was left behind, and some have been caught leaving software behind or reinstalling themselves silently later.

Apex Legends also has kernel anti-cheat, so my point still stands. Also Apex legends famously had people's machines get hacked through it's anti-cheat during a tournament.

That's precisely why I haven't so much as touched any games if they don't support Linux with their anti-cheat solution. The developers of Apex Legends proudly announcing that dropping support for Linux made cheaters drop "significantly" doesn't sit well with me, and in fact I suspect EA is doing something malicious that can't be feasibly detected precisely because of their kernel-level access. And don't even get me started with Tencent-funded Riot's Vanguard, it's practically guaranteed that China will eventually demand to use it as a backdoor someday.

there's no way for users to reliably remove it

I'm not sure if this is true for the ones backed by the larger companies, like EAC. It's possible to completely remove EAC using their installer.

Games like valorant are filled with cheaters despite using kernel anticheat

In my experience, this is untrue. Valorant isn't "filled" with cheaters in the same way Apex Legends is.

Single-player? Absolutely. Multiplayer though? Outside of fighting games, indie games, and anything made by Valve, it's increasingly difficult to find any multiplayer game that works on Linux, and even those that still work can have the multiplayer yanked off down the line like what happened with Apex Legends.

Kernel anticheat is seriously bad, and shouldn't be allowed on any computer. Kernel anticheat is basically installing full access backdoors to your computer that you have no control over. Attackers and malicious devs have used kernel anticheat to install ransomware, spyware, crypto miners, and more. They also frequently cause increased system instability and crashes.

Kernel anticheat typically runs from the moment your PC is turned on, and it's job is literally to spy on you to make sure you're not cheating. Among other things, many take constant screenshots of your PC to see what you're running. In this day and age where every company is spying on your and selling your data, installing kernel anticheat is literally sharing 100% of what you do on your PC with a company (usually chinese company) and trusting them to not take advantage of your data.

Furthermore once you've installed kernel level anticheat, there's no way for users to reliably remove it. Most anticheats will reinstall themselves if removed, and it's basically assumed that once you've installed one, your system is permanently compromised. They can create backdoors on the PC to allow reinstalling themselves in the future, or even install other software without your knowledge. There are concerns about them batching your bios, so that even a full harddrive wipe won't be able to remove their backdoors.

Finally, the whole point of kernel anticheat (to players) is to prevent cheaters, but that doesn't even work. Games like valorant are filled with cheaters despite using kernel anticheat. It's just led to a bunch of kernel level cheat software that's still able to hide from anticheat. So players are giving up their PC security/etc for basically no real gain.

I sure hope not. I don't want gaming on Linux to be turned into something where you need to run steamOS to be able to play certain games or be dependent fully on Valve, instead of any distro you like.

I don't want to switch Microsoft with Valve. I want my operating system to be completely mine.

I am already annoyed with how certain programs like Geforce Now's new native linux client is advertised as a SteamOS client and that it only works on a steam deck.

I don't know if it does only works on a Steam deck but they sure advertise it as such.

Lots of other games to play.

Linux is too secure to trust with their rootkits.

If even Microsoft was/is considering giving custom kernel modules the boot and potentially not allowing them in the future (due to similar but unrelated issues) why should the Linux community embrace proprietary kernel modules from companies who's goal is antithetical to the user, and which are probably horribly insecure and/or rootkits themselves.

Signed Kernels are problematic for some users. While the distribution-supplied kernel binaries are fine for most users, there are always those who want to (or need to, due to hardware quirks or bugs) tinker with the kernel compile-time configuration, or the kernel source code itself...

Good. Fuck that shit.

Doing this in driver doesn't work very well as UI elements will also be affected. It should be implemented in games directly

A shame that many multiplayer game developers, like EA and Riot, still consider Linux to be too unsafe to trust with an anti-cheat. I wonder if Valve is working on a proper solution for that - signed kernels and packages a la MacOS, perhaps?

Unfortunately, the story is very different when running an Nvidia GPU. I hope the driver situation improves. I really don't want to use Windows anymore, but the performance difference is just too big. I'm however running Linux on my second (full AMD) system with little to no issues.

But it can't run Lossless frame gen or AFMF. Hopefully steamOS can support AFMF natively