With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#151

Post by anderber » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

2bitencryption wrote: post #134

rubyn00bie wrote: post #4

Gaming on Linux has been so fucking good. I switched from Windows to Linux a month ago and literally haven’t found a game I can’t play. Even Red Dead Redemption 2, Hades, Fallen Jedi, Ghostrunner... Oh the really icing on the cake is just how easy it all is. You literally just install the Windows version and things “just work.” Its amazing. I’ve said this a lot of times now but it’s pretty amazing to write code and p…

Agreed, however after months of being "Linux only" (Manjaro KDE + Proton), just this weekend I broke and installed a Windows as a dual-boot option. 90% of games with Proton "just work" like you said. It is amazing. But then there's that one game that doesn't work, or works but with half the fps... for me, it was Death Stranding. It runs at 60+ fps at 1440p on Windows, but runs at half that on Proton, with horrible ar…

I would think that Cyberpunk 2077 would have good Proton compatibility on day one. It runs on Stadia, which uses Vulkan.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#152

Post by devwastaken » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

ldd wrote: post #135

aaomidi wrote: post #22

Another Linux gamer. I seriously don't miss windows anymore. At this point I'm not worried about compatibility, but rather shitty game companies banning you the second they figure out you're playing on linux. This is especially an issue in PvE heavy games that have only small PvP elements. Looking at you Destiny 2. I really wish companies stopped their draconian policies about Linux gaming. Or at the very least just…

I was seriously considering adding Linux support for my game, that already has turn-based multiplayer, and this thread was the last thing I needed to convince myself it could work. Performance may be an issue. I wonder if people would be ok with electron games sold on steam running on linux...

Discord and spotify are both electron on Linux, so I would imagine it would work.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#153

Post by deadbunny » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

fartcannon wrote: post #32

uncletaco wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of an extension of this: does Google Stadia availability imply an official build for linux? Are they under some kind of exclusivity agreement with regards to a linux version?

I think it's mostly that CDProjekt and GOG got called out by the Linux community for pulling support of the Witcher 3, and some other things. The CEO had a bit of a tantrum about it and now won't support Linux.

I mean CDPR staff did get death threats, let's not forget that in this story.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#154

Post by jagger27 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

bserge wrote: post #139

jagger27 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I’m having trouble installing Windows on my AMD B450 system where Linux also runs fine. It locks up during the boot process after the first reboot.

What do you install it from and what software do you use to build the installation image?

USB 3.0 flash drive made with Microsoft's own installer tool from their website (from another Windows machine). So just to be clear, it fully completes the installation and boots normally the first time, but fails to boot after I install the first Windows Update. I have successfully run Windows 10 on this particular device in the past, which is weird. I only reinstalled it to use a larger SSD.

Some Googling suggests it might be a USB device issue. I also have a weird issue where out of nowhere my onboard Realtek Ethernet stopped working in Windows (though works fine in Linux), so I've been using a USB 3.0 Ethernet dongle.

Something's rotten with my machine. But I'm not exactly sure what. I'd likely use it more for work related tasks, but it's so frustrating dealing with this crap that just plug my MacBook into my monitor and call it a day.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#155

Post by invokestatic » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

dylz wrote: post #144

invokestatic wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before I “switched sides” to anti-cheat, I used to write and sell cheat software for CS:GO. I had a registered company and purchased an EV code signing certificate just as your post suggests, even getting my cheat drivers signed by Microsoft. I am very familiar with the process given than I’ve seen both sides now. While other anti-cheats maintain white lists or blacklists of vulnerable drivers, I’ve chosen a differen…

I'm guessing this is a mix of attestation and inspecting what they actually do instead of just blindly checking the certificate and that the signature is verified? I'm curious how well executed that works when it comes to less well behaved anticheats (like Riot's Vanguard generally stays hands off, but GameGuard will immediately heartbeat a "ban me" and intentionally cause a bluescreen to cause you to "lose any data…

I’m not going to comment on the specifics of what we do besides what I’ve already said. I will say that I’m really pushing to change the perception that all anti-cheats are bad and are user-hostile. I’m trying to build a product that shows that anti-cheats can actually respect user privacy and provide a positive player experience. And I’m trying to do it by better engineering.

Vanguard I believe would intentionally bluescreen you if it detected you’ve disabled PatchGuard. They had very good reasoning to do so, but I wouldn’t do something like that since I believe it’s user-hostile. Battleye I believe actually doesn’t use TLS last time I checked, using some sort of home brewed XOR cipher which is a bit scary. And of course remoting into computers is unacceptable under any circumstance.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#156

Post by devwastaken » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

invokestatic wrote: post #133

jasonjayr wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's none of the game's business what other software my computer is running. These checks have in the past been notoriously buggy, and can interfere with other operations. This kind of crud is what remote attestation is for, and Microsoft should be responsible for developing it, not every different gaming company competing with each other for kernel access.

Fwiw, my solution does actually take advantage of remote attestation, and if that is validated, a large part of kernel integrity checks are skipped. The problem is that many “gaming” consumer motherboards don’t ship with TPMv2 or secure boot, and we still have to support those computers.

How does tpm or secureboot assist in anti cheat?

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#157

Post by mayneack » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

keraf wrote: post #72

Funnily enough, one of my most played games on Linux is Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, a Microsoft game. No rendering/frame issues and got the multiplayer working (manual steps needed [0]). Less and less reasons to boot on Windows! [0] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/3189#issuecom...

For what it's worth, I don't think I had to do that for ubuntu on steam to get it to work back in April.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#158

Post by aaomidi » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

ldd wrote: post #135

aaomidi wrote: post #22

Another Linux gamer. I seriously don't miss windows anymore. At this point I'm not worried about compatibility, but rather shitty game companies banning you the second they figure out you're playing on linux. This is especially an issue in PvE heavy games that have only small PvP elements. Looking at you Destiny 2. I really wish companies stopped their draconian policies about Linux gaming. Or at the very least just…

I was seriously considering adding Linux support for my game, that already has turn-based multiplayer, and this thread was the last thing I needed to convince myself it could work. Performance may be an issue. I wonder if people would be ok with electron games sold on steam running on linux...

Thank you! At the very least please try to make it work with proton :)

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#159

Post by p1necone » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

ldd wrote: post #135

aaomidi wrote: post #22

Another Linux gamer. I seriously don't miss windows anymore. At this point I'm not worried about compatibility, but rather shitty game companies banning you the second they figure out you're playing on linux. This is especially an issue in PvE heavy games that have only small PvP elements. Looking at you Destiny 2. I really wish companies stopped their draconian policies about Linux gaming. Or at the very least just…

I was seriously considering adding Linux support for my game, that already has turn-based multiplayer, and this thread was the last thing I needed to convince myself it could work. Performance may be an issue. I wonder if people would be ok with electron games sold on steam running on linux...

Normally electron apps bother me on linux because they don't use my carefully selected GTK/QT/Openbox theming like most native apps do (whereas on windows I don't care because I don't have the ability to make anything look how I want).

But I expect games to be fullscreen and have their own bespoke UI look and feel anyway, so it's not really an issue with them.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#160

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

invokestatic wrote: post #112

izacus wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern anticheats are basically kernel rootkits which go even to the point of trying to checksum your drivers and inspect how they work. They're basically as invasive as they get. They obviously can't hook into Linux kernel so they react by just banning the player.

Now I'm biased because I'm an anti-cheat developer, but I really can't see how checking the integrity of your installed kernel device drivers is at all invasive.

Unfortunately, your model is just fundamentally broken. Non-system software should never have that level of access to the whole system, and a good operating system should block it for stability, security and privacy reasons, just like any other malware.

No doubt there will continue to be intrusive anti-cheat software in use with some games for a while because some people are disturbingly desperate to play those games and they use operating systems that are junk. Some people still pre-order games too, even though it's illogical to extend that old physical world idea to downloads.

But in the long run, this kind of software is a liability. Better operating systems and more gamers moving to them will eventually kill it for that reason if nothing else does first.

Given that cheating only matters if it actually affects gameplay unfairly, it has always made far more sense to look for cheating through its effects on gameplay anyway, which is something you can observe server-side in an online PvP game. Trusted client-side security checks make no more sense in this context than any other. So it's not even as if killing off the intrusive client-side anti-cheats will lose anything of value in the long run.