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Bottles – Run Windows software and games on Linux

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Re: Bottles – Run Windows software and games on Linux

#101

Post by ddtaylor »

gpderetta wrote: post #76
revanx_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I game on linux, it's not as secure as I would like it to be. I run everything under unprivileged container including steam, the problem is that for vulkan hardware renderer to work it requires direct access to the device and the linux kernel doesn't virtualize device access. It's a security nightmare as far as I can see.

One issue with device virtualization is that the required hardware features are often locked out in non enterprise-grade hardware (although they can sometime be unlocked, for example: https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock ).

FWIW Nvidia has removed some of these restrictions lately.

Re: Bottles – Run Windows software and games on Linux

#102

Post by ddtaylor »

hparadiz wrote: post #52
ddtaylor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really because it requires very esoteric configurations to avoid other users reading important files of yours. Unless you're willing to modify your default SSH (and other, apache, etc.) configurations out-of-the-box setup will leave all your data readable by other users.

In the linux world it's standard operating procedure to make a separate user/group for every service and ensure the file system is cognizant of that. And the default in ubuntu runs mysql with mysql user and nginx / apache with www-data as a user.

That's correct, but if you want to keep any files that services like that access, such as SSH keys/authorized_keys you need to give them access to your directories. Because of this you can't make your home directory only readable by your user, since then sshd cannot access `~/.ssh` to check your authorized_keys file. The same is true for running a web server in `~/public_html` and anything else.

The agreed upon solution to this is to make the home directory readable, then split the files into a `~/public` and `~/private` directory, which is well accepted in the server space but completely non-adopted and not straightforward in the desktop space. It's technically possible to modify your $XDG_DATA_DIR and other similar configurations, but many programs and tools still don't care and will only look for and operate on configuration files in `~/.config` or `~/.local` or worse yet just `~/.foo`.

Re: Bottles – Run Windows software and games on Linux

#103

Post by ddtaylor »

pferde wrote: post #73
autoexec wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep a gaming PC that has absolutely nothing I care about on it. The Windows system is never allowed to access my email, credit cards, or anything I care about in any way. This was my plan too, but my intention was to keep the windows box offline 99% of the time (pretty much only connecting for downloads/installs). I still didn't like the idea of installing steam on the machine though since that would mean it's g…

Most games already do run with little or no problems. I recommend looking up games you are interested in on https://protondb.com to see how well you can expect them to run with Proton.

ProtonDB is really cool and I have been a big supporter (and contributor) over the last few years. The problem (and what you'll see if you look closer at the database) is that we have this giant elephant in the room in the Linux community named Nvidia. What works for an Intel/AMD GPU user may not work for an Nvidia user and the level of bugs associated with Nvidia on Linux is obscene. It sucks, and yeah, just buy AMD cards, but the reality is that Nvidia dominates the GPU space right now significantly and their cards seem to be a few generates ahead of AMD still.

Just a while ago for a CTF we implemented some hash breaking algorithms in OpenCL and CUDA and members of our team ran them on their own hardware. Firstly, we did it in Windows despite otherwise doing everything in Linux because the OpenCL/CUDA support and speed was leaps and bounds ahead on Windows. Next we compared the performance of hashes per second and it was orders of magnitude worse on AMD cards. We tweaked the algorithm a bit here and there to favor the AMD card and saw some minor gains, but overall we're talking a difference of 15/s versus 200/s in terms of how many hashes it was breaking per second.

Re: Bottles – Run Windows software and games on Linux

#104

Post by KolenCh »

hparadiz wrote: post #51
ddtaylor wrote: post #23

Lutris, PlayOnLinux, Proton, etc. are all really cool. But, if you value your time and security, just keep a dedicated Windows system for gaming. I keep all the things I actually care about or don't want stolen on my Linux system with full drive encryption and I keep a gaming PC that has absolutely nothing I care about on it. The Windows system is never allowed to access my email, credit cards, or anything I care abo…

This makes no sense. So you value your security but then choose to go with a less secure operating system? You can easily install all your games on another user on your linux box and run as that user. Super easy and it won't have access to any of your main home directory files. In fact with this configuration it's a lot easier to ensure that the games are sandboxed away from anything important. In contrast on Windows…

No I think it makes some sense. You’re thinking in absolute terms. If you know everything and do everything right, your description may be better. But if you don’t want to be so careful all the time, wanting to be relax and not need to think about security implications all the time, the setup above is quite good.

I carry out a similar mentality, I don’t trust Windows and hence I run things I don’t trust on Windows as well. Eg I only install Zoom native app on Windows but not on any other desktop OSes. Use windows like it is a public machine, and you’ll have nothing to lose. (It is just an analogy, not to mean an exact statement, because you always has something to lose… just minimally here.)

Re: Bottles – Run Windows software and games on Linux

#105

Post by lodi »

mschuster91 wrote: post #87
dark-star wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just use a Windows-VM, and if you're concerned about performance, use PCIe passthrough for your graphics card. Or use something like https://looking-glass.io/

> and if you're concerned about performance, use PCIe passthrough for your graphics card. Won't work with NVIDIA cards at all without a boatload of hacks (because they don't want consumer cards to be used in virtualized environments), and AMD cards are an utter pain in the ass to work with because AMD can't be bothered to get basic PCI stuff to work [1]. Also, you always run the risk of some anti-cheat solution detec…

> Won't work with NVIDIA cards at all without a boatload of hacks...

Actually the hack required to do this is quite minimal. This is the only thing I had to do to get the driver unblocked in win10/win11 for my rtx3070. I lifted this directly from https://mathiashueber.com/fighting-error-43-nvidia-gpu-virtu...

Re: Bottles – Run Windows software and games on Linux

#106

Post by gpderetta »

ddtaylor wrote: post #101
gpderetta wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue with device virtualization is that the required hardware features are often locked out in non enterprise-grade hardware (although they can sometime be unlocked, for example: https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock ).

FWIW Nvidia has removed some of these restrictions lately.

Amazing. Will have to try it then, as it is a bit annoying to have to restart to assign the card to a vm.
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