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Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

phoronix.com

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Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, is there anti-cheat that doesnt need a locked down OS and hardware? Dont understand what you are cheering for.

Steam deck could conceivably use a signed bootloader to provide some of the guarantees that an Anti-cheat is looking for. But regardless, Valve sounds committed to describing the steam deck as "still a PC [that you could put windows on]". For non-steamdeck Linux users, at least running on Linux shouldn't be a disqualifier for the Anti-cheat software.

There is efi secureboot and lockdown lsm. Maybe it will require both.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd say no, not really. They're hacky and a lot of overhead for what is actually a very straightforward and natural thing on other OSs. AppImage is a bit better, but it still has to pull some namespacing tricks to work.

I don't understand how you say AppImage is better when it doesn't even provide runtimes and SDKs. The hardest problem is to know which APIs to use, and AppImage provides zero support for the developer there.

AppImage is simpler. It requires no management infrastructure, no repos, and no package manager. You can keep multiple versions of the same application around, you can store and run them on different volumes and media, and installation and removal is identical to simple file management.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you say AppImage is better when it doesn't even provide runtimes and SDKs. The hardest problem is to know which APIs to use, and AppImage provides zero support for the developer there.

My personal opinion below. - SteamRuntime: A runtime environment for Steam applications. The next generation is/will use Flatpak related technologies like Bubblewrap. It's what you target. - Flatpak: there's close to no overhead, you can try the Steam Flatpak and see for yourself. It's aimed at desktop applications and the sandbox gets better and better. There's a FUD website called flatkill that has already been tor…

FlatPak requires a package manager and repos to work. AppImage doesn't. That's what I meant by overhead.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they can be installed along with the games under a gaming only account on the Linux machine, that is, with zero permissions on system and other users files around, that's fine with me. Completely ineffective. It will be trivial to circumvent those protections. Might as well not bother. The truth is cheaters are merely excersising their computing freedom. It's my computer, the game is merely running on it. If I w…

I think there is an underlying assumption that you’re entitled to play the game, therefor anti cheat is violating your freedoms. But if we remove the assumption that you are entitled to play any game how ever you please i think this argument somewhat falls apart. If you don’t like their using anti cheat, then just don’t play those games which use it. I just don’t think enough people agree with you that it will work i…

It's not entitlement to want to play the games I paid money for without my computer getting owned. This is basic respect, not some insane notion. Why are game companies entitled to complete control over our computers?

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#295
post #162
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trade-off is that you have literal malware on the machine that is controlled by a third party company that most likely doesn't have their security practices up to snuff.

While true, and most of us here at HN will probably agree, tons of people don't care, and that's clear by how many people play games that require it.

I care, but what is the alternative? I play on a computer that I use for little else, but most people out there can't do that. Most competitive games would just not exist on PC without anti-cheat software and highly competitive games need intrusive software. It is really ridiculous that it is necessary but people suck.

Although there are all sorts of attempts at server-side and even player anti-cheat hardware devices, to my knowledge there is no option that can realistically replace client system anti-cheat.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you say AppImage is better when it doesn't even provide runtimes and SDKs. The hardest problem is to know which APIs to use, and AppImage provides zero support for the developer there.

AppImage is simpler. It requires no management infrastructure, no repos, and no package manager. You can keep multiple versions of the same application around, you can store and run them on different volumes and media, and installation and removal is identical to simple file management.

The documentation claims that flatpak allows for single-file bundles, so repository is not required:

https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/single-file-bundles.html

Also, you can install multiple versions of an application, but you can only run one version at a time:

Note that flatpak allows to have multiple branches of an application and runtimes installed and used at the same time. However, only one version of an application can be current, meaning its exported files (for instance desktop files and icons) are visible to the host. The last installed version is made current by default, but this can manually changed with flatpak make-current.

https://manpages.debian.org/testing/flatpak/flatpak-install.... https://manpages.debian.org/testing/flatpak/flatpak-make-cur...

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My old company made a DIS box (UK gov-specified integration server that would talk to the central Government Gateway) as Java on Solaris in the early noughties, and doing a performance test that one Solaris machine took down the entire Windows-based Government Gateway test environment. Draw your own conclusions :)

It's difficult to draw any conclusions without knowing the environments, what's running on them, were they configured properly, etc etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ideologically bound to any platform, but stuff like this just sounds like another tired old-man Windows vs Linux/Unix pissing contest.

Well, regarding config, it was run by Microsoft, so it's hard to say how well it was set up.

It was more of a fun story than anything though. Didn't mean to offend anyone who identifies strongly with MS.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppImage is simpler. It requires no management infrastructure, no repos, and no package manager. You can keep multiple versions of the same application around, you can store and run them on different volumes and media, and installation and removal is identical to simple file management.

The documentation claims that flatpak allows for single-file bundles, so repository is not required: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/single-file-bundles.html Also, you can install multiple versions of an application, but you can only run one version at a time: Note that flatpak allows to have multiple branches of an application and runtimes installed and used at the same time. However, only one version of an appli…

Ok, either those are relatively new features or they're just enver promoted anywhere.

Still, what I like about AppImage is that it is just a file that I download, put it wherever I want, and run. then delete it when I don't want it anymore.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alternatively, you could provide the geometry without providing the semantic information. Yes - cloud rendering. It's _a_ solution but comes with tradeoffs. Namely, it introduces large amounts of latency, and costs a dumpster truck of money. > You can make an aim bot by connecting the output of your monitor to a hardware-emulated mouse. Anticheat is a cat and mouse game, and raising the barrier to entry improves th…

> Yes - cloud rendering. Only a very small part of the rendering needs to be done on the server; notably, the camera could still move, and the client could still make the usual heuristic predictions about where things are, so it wouldn't feel laggy. > and buying specialist hardware If you have a streaming rig, you already have nearly all the hardware. Just add a Raspberry Pi Zero or something, and you're good to go.…

> Only a very small part of the rendering needs to be done on the server; notably, the camera could still move, and the client could still make the usual heuristic predictions about where things are, so it wouldn't feel laggy.

This is just nonsense.

The data that the client uses to make those heuristic predictions is the same data the cheats, so once you send that extra data over you've undone the benefit of not sending the client any extra info it needs, _plus_ youve added an intermediate network hop for your remote rendering, _and_ you've now required that your game has essentially a hardware DRM in the remote computer that you're rendering.

> If you have a streaming rig, you already have nearly all the hardware. Just add a Raspberry Pi Zero or something, and you're good to go.

The number of people out there who are spending thousands of dollars on secondary rigs to hook up emulated mice via a raspberry pi to run custom cheats has got to br vanishingly close to 0 for even biggest games in the world. Given that _these_ are the measures youre suggesting to bypass the anticheat, it sounds like they've sufficiently raised the bar to me.

When people writing AI driven hardware mice is a common cheat vector let's talk, but right now the cheat vector is people running cheats installed inside the kernel.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#300
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Think about the case of seeing an enemy onscreen and headshotting them instantly.

I think you misunderstood my post, and considering the surprising number of downvotes on it, I wonder if others did too? Can you explain further though? I don't understand your case. It sounds like an aimbot, which is what would be prevented by not sending the client more info than is needed.

I guess it is the case where the info begs to the player, the player reaction time is in tens or hundreds of milliseconds (time to render the image, display it on the screen, player to see, move the mouse to aim and shoot) versus an aimbot that does not need to wait and can react in a few milliseconds. This is cheating if the cheater's aimbot is using an advantage normal players don't have (unless everyone is using aimbots and this is no longer a human-played game but a bot game).
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