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Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

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Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#201
post #74

A headline in Linux gaming circles that hasn't hit the wider circuit yet (probably because it hasn't actually been delivered yet) is that Valve are working with Battleye and EAC to get anti-cheat working on Proton for the release of the steam deck. If this happens it will be, without exaggeration, the greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming. I'm not expecting a massive increase overnight, but it should mean tha…

I really hope the work Valve is doing with Proton will help to get Office (no, the browser versions aren't a substitute), Adobe software and Touchdesigner working on Linux. I don't game, and would love to switch to Linux but I need those apps to work on it.

Doesn't all of that stuff have great Wine ratings?

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope the work Valve is doing with Proton will help to get Office (no, the browser versions aren't a substitute), Adobe software and Touchdesigner working on Linux. I don't game, and would love to switch to Linux but I need those apps to work on it.

Microsoft could at least stop actively trying to break O365 on Wine, which I believe it is doing. I have heard rumors (albeit unsourced ones) that MS is trying to bring Outlook over first.

Outlook is a progressive webapp now, so that makes some sense.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#203
post #30

I made Linux Mint the primary OS on my son's first laptop some 3-years ago when he was around 12, and he's taken to it like a fish to water. He's even taken to using regolith as his (tiling) window manager now, and prefers to use vim for programming (python/julia/c) rather than any IDE. Also have Mint installed on my mom's laptop - she only uses the browser and is ok with it - she has no idea of what an OS even is. I…

Both of my nieces are running Ubuntu, it's been a big win in reduction of support calls and ease of setting things up for them.

My only regret is that I should have been braver and put them on Manjaro. I thought Ubuntu would be more "set it and forget it" and maybe have better documentation, but some of my most annoying support calls I've gotten have been dealing with driver issues that just weren't present on Manjaro at all. And I generally think the Arch documentation is a lot better than Ubuntu's anyway.

> the only thing preventing Linux's more widespread adoption

I think I disagree with this in some ways; I think absent any support at all Linux would be difficult for some people. But if you have someone around who's good with Linux, I think it'll be more stable than Windows and have a lot fewer annoyances/problems.

I know that I would be debugging a Windows install more often and that it would be more annoying to do, because I have other family members who run Windows and I know what kinds of issues they're running into.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#204
I was always dismissive of people complaining about Linux as I’ve been using it for the last 15 years without issue. But then I got an nvidia optimus laptop as a gift recently and I just gave up using Linux on this machine.

1. Suspend on lid close simply didn’t work. I’ve tried all kernels I could get my hands on. I resorted to remapping the bogus key that the lid close was sending to suspend.

2. My laptop have the hdmi output wired on the dGPU. So I have to live with a world of pain that is mixed DPIs on Linux where only wayland have proper support.

3. Wayland got some nvidia love on 477 drivers but, in my test, it was a big mess.

So yes, I stopped dismissing people complaining about Linux and went back to windows on this laptop. I assume that nvidia and high DPIs are a common enough usecase in 2021 that I would not recommend anyone to go through this experience.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#205
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aimbots need no trust from the server. As long as the client knows things the player doesn't, and there isn't a chain of custody from the physical mouse to the server, you can cheat.

Why would a client need to know of such things? If the player can't / shouldn't know of something, then the client shouldn't either. There are some interesting repercussions of this train of thought though. Take an enemy hiding in brush in an FPS game. The player would have line of sight to their hiding spot, and current games (I think) just leave it to the player's eyeballs' ability to see them through the brush. Th…

Alternatively, you could provide the geometry without providing the semantic information. I'm not sure how viable that is, but it'd make aim-bots a bit harder.

> First, there's the aim bots and other cheating it allows for.

You can make an aim bot by connecting the output of your monitor to a hardware-emulated mouse. Unless the server can detect this, kernel-level anticheat is building a really tall wall with the door unlocked. (If it worked I wouldn't object so much.)

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#206
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is requiring publishers to remove their DRM, and use Valve’s, and they (the publishers) most certainly would not do that. I’d bet that if Valve tried that, there’d be an antitrust lawsuit against them real quick. It sucks, but the alternative is getting the DRM to work on Linux, so that’s what they chose.

The arms race between game publishers and the small minority of gamers who actually cheat is harmful to everyone else. Stub the DRM APIs to usefully return nothing quickly rather than enabling voyeurs who think scanning and logging the contents of people's hard drives on their servers is acceptable.

I've heard of some online-only games - such as Fall Guys - being basically killed sales-wise by insufficient anti-cheat protection.

After all, if another player can run faster or fly or has perfect aim, everyone else is basically playing an unwinnable game.

This isn't helped by the current fashion for automatic match-making and 100-player battle royale games - which make one cheater impact a lot more players.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#207
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aimbots need no trust from the server. As long as the client knows things the player doesn't, and there isn't a chain of custody from the physical mouse to the server, you can cheat.

Why would a client need to know of such things? If the player can't / shouldn't know of something, then the client shouldn't either. There are some interesting repercussions of this train of thought though. Take an enemy hiding in brush in an FPS game. The player would have line of sight to their hiding spot, and current games (I think) just leave it to the player's eyeballs' ability to see them through the brush. Th…

because the alternative is server-side rendering of every frame, which would introduce unacceptable latency to input and also likely significantly reduce graphical detail, given the existing huge investments in consumer rendering hardware that have not yet been duplicated serverside

google stadia exists. nobody playing competitively uses it, and that's exactly the demographic that cares the most about anti-cheat

and, it still doesn't prevent computer-assisted input

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anticheat without malware has been around for ages : simply don't trust the client. Even Minecraft servers manage it. Instead of playing a constant game of cat-and-mouse trying to prevent forbidden code from running when you can just plug in a USB rubber ducky , put the logic server-side. Ban problematic behaviour, as opposed to methods that might result in problematic behaviour. It takes some ingenuity, but what are…

As a Minecraft server operator, I can tell you there are plenty of client-side cheats that are hard to stop server-side. Also many players end up complaining about false positives typically caused by movement errors from internet lag on their end. Also, all these anti-cheat methods are not supported by Mojang but are third-party plugins. Stock Minecraft Server hardly tries to prevent many of the hacks.

> Stock Minecraft Server hardly tries to prevent many of the hacks.

It would require stuff like server-side chunk culling, which doesn't jibe with the way Minecraft is designed. However, there's nothing stopping a new game from being designed like that.

I named Minecraft because it's fundamentally flawed for server-side anti-cheat (you're limited by a client that requires a lot of theoretically-unnecessary information, and doesn't send enough requests for you to provide this lazily), and people manage to catch enough cheating to keep things fun for everyone else. If you control both the server and the client, you don't really have much of an excuse.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#209

Interestingly, Linux is the dominant gaming platform. It's just that it's called Android.

Perhaps the headline should clarify that it's talking about GNU/Linux

It's always useful to differentiate between embedded, mobile and desktop/server-grade operating systems.
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