Steam's February Survey: AMD CPUs & GPUs Continue To Dominate For Linux Gamers

[oleid]

Indians seem to like Linux on the desktop. And they have made many times less growth.

Could there be a correlation? The more the public uses from Linux the less economic growth they have .

There is a correlation, sure, but no causation.

[dlq84]

Anticheat for Linux cannot work or exist period. The architecture is far too open for meddling.

Anticheat doesn't work on any OS. It's not about how open the OS is.

[avis]

Anticheat doesn't work on any OS. It's not about how open the OS is.

Kernel level anticheats requiring Secure Boot (signed with Microsoft MOK keys) work just fine in Windows and they could also work for MacOS but I've not run this OS enough to say. Both OS'es actually provide extensive protections and guarantees that what you're running is what you're running. Nothing like that is possible in Linux where you're free to circumvent secure boot or even the whole chain of trust by overriding the kernel or libraries responsible for that since nothing but the kernel is signed and you can resign everything with your own MOK key and alter the kernel such a way it will report that you're running a "trusted" MOK.

Of course Windows/MacOS still cannot protect against rogue DMA devices signed by forfeited/stolen certificates or HW cheats embedded into periphery devices but those are not cheap and normally far too expensive for most kids willing to cheat which greatly reduces the amount of cheating, probably by a factor of 1000 if not more. That's enough to make any popular online game totally fair and playable.

I don't understand why Open Source fans always opine about stuff they don't know anything about and while doing so they also claim things which are just outrageously wrong.

Do you even play online, dude? Huh?

Have you ever run or played CSGO/CS2/Valorant/Apex Legends/Dota/PubG/CoD/etc.? What about grinding any of them for a few thousand hours? I've done that. I have a ton of experience with cheaters. What about you? A Linux fan who probably plays 15 years old single player games on his ingrated GPU. The hell are you talking about then? What makes you believe your opinion is even remotely true/relevant/based?

[partcyborg]

Kernel level anticheats requiring Secure Boot (signed with Microsoft MOK keys) work just fine in Windows and they could also work for MacOS but I've not run this OS enough to say. Both OS'es actually provide extensive protections and guarantees that what you're running is what you're running. Nothing like that is possible in Linux where you're free to circumvent secure boot or even the whole chain of trust by overriding the kernel or libraries responsible for that since nothing but the kernel is signed and you can resign everything with your own MOK key and alter the kernel such a way it will report that you're running a "trusted" MOK.

Of course Windows/MacOS still cannot protect against rogue DMA devices signed by forfeited/stolen certificates or HW cheats embedded into periphery devices but those are not cheap and normally far too expensive for most kids willing to cheat which greatly reduces the amount of cheating, probably by a factor of 1000 if not more. That's enough to make any popular online game totally fair and playable.

I don't understand why Open Source fans always opine about stuff they don't know anything about and while doing so they also claim things which are just outrageously wrong.

Do you even play online, dude? Huh?

Have you ever run or played CSGO/CS2/Valorant/Apex Legends/Dota/PubG/CoD/etc.? What about grinding any of them for a few thousand hours? I've done that. I have a ton of experience with cheaters. What about you? A Linux fan who probably plays 15 years old single player games on his ingrated GPU. The hell are you talking about then? What makes you believe your opinion is even remotely true/relevant/based?

There are no game anticheats that require secure boot. They just require you have driver signing enforcement on. I have played all of those games (some of them extensively) on a windows system with secure boot off.

[drakonas777]

Kernel level anticheats requiring Secure Boot (signed with Microsoft MOK keys) work just fine in Windows and they could also work for MacOS but I've not run this OS enough to say. Both OS'es actually provide extensive protections and guarantees that what you're running is what you're running. Nothing like that is possible in Linux where you're free to circumvent secure boot or even the whole chain of trust by overriding the kernel or libraries responsible for that since nothing but the kernel is signed and you can resign everything with your own MOK key and alter the kernel such a way it will report that you're running a "trusted" MOK.

Of course Windows/MacOS still cannot protect against rogue DMA devices signed by forfeited/stolen certificates or HW cheats embedded into periphery devices but those are not cheap and normally far too expensive for most kids willing to cheat which greatly reduces the amount of cheating, probably by a factor of 1000 if not more. That's enough to make any popular online game totally fair and playable.

I don't understand why Open Source fans always opine about stuff they don't know anything about and while doing so they also claim things which are just outrageously wrong.

Do you even play online, dude? Huh?

Have you ever run or played CSGO/CS2/Valorant/Apex Legends/Dota/PubG/CoD/etc.? What about grinding any of them for a few thousand hours? I've done that. I have a ton of experience with cheaters. What about you? A Linux fan who probably plays 15 years old single player games on his ingrated GPU. The hell are you talking about then? What makes you believe your opinion is even remotely true/relevant/based?

If an obscurity is the main reason for "better security", then a solution is pretty much garbage. Blaming openness for the "worse security" is an absurd indefensible position, but you like these for attention (during the right moon phase).

Linux as such is not even relevant to anything you write here. It's all about hardware and Linux based OS/Software vendor. There are plenty of embedded systems with a full trusted execution environment in Linux.

Providing a number of played hours as some sort of an argument here is just fucking cringe. Also a logical fallacy, but you don't care about those.

[avis]

There are no game anticheats that require secure boot. They just require you have driver signing enforcement on. I have played all of those games (some of them extensively) on a windows system with secure boot off.

Volarant kernel anticheat requires secure boot: https://support-valorant.riotgames.c...d-Restrictions

So much for "I've played these games".

What a clownfest we have here.

[tenchrio]

Anticheat for Linux cannot work or exist period. The architecture is far too open for meddling.

I mean quite honestly the same could be said for Windows (it is still your hardware after all).
About every year there is a cheater caught during a Valorant tournament and most of the time they aren't even caught on the first game let alone by the anticheat (and my god are they blatantly obvious). Just look up "Nootnoot valorant cheaters" for the most recent example (for one of the earliest I have bookmarked, look up "Ryut", people watching the stream had to report him).

Not to mention the false positives. I was playing Factorio with my friends yesterday and one said he was banned from Valorant for third party software, the other guy said he had the same issue and the first time they unbanned him but the second time they didn't even respond so he made a second account, I know these two goobers since elementary school, they don't even cheat in singleplayer games, it's just absolutely laughable. Reports online are also numerous (and Riot never specifies what software led to the ban).

Anticheats should never be kernel level, it isn't as effective as people claim it to be but the trade off is massive, people reported performance problems in other games after installing the Vanguard anticheat, you can't run unsigned drivers (which can sometimes be tied to obscure but required hardware) not to mention the potential attack vector, there is a reason the Sony BMG rootkit is being brought up as a comparison (if you want two prime examples, in the first case Valorant/Vanguard has been known to just disable fan control software that it doesn't trust resulting in PCs overheating, in the second case aside from the Sony BMG debacle you have Genshin Impact's kernel level anticheat which was used for randsomeware purposes and all I can do is wonder why a singleplayer game without PVP needs a kernel level anticheat running 24/7).

So what is the solution to cheating? Well that is something that companies are still trying to figure out, even largely closed systems like consoles are eventually hacked and step by step instructions are sold that even a child can do (the cracks are already forming with for instance the recent PS5-IPV6-Kernel-Exploit).

[avis]

I mean quite honestly the same could be said for Windows (it is still your hardware after all).
About every year there is a cheater caught during a Valorant tournament and most of the time they aren't even caught on the first game let alone by the anticheat (and my god are they blatantly obvious). Just look up "Nootnoot valorant cheaters" for the most recent example (for one of the earliest I have bookmarked, look up "Ryut", people watching the stream had to report him).

Not to mention the false positives. I was playing Factorio with my friends yesterday and one said he was banned from Valorant for third party software, the other guy said he had the same issue and the first time they unbanned him but the second time they didn't even respond so he made a second account, I know these two goobers since elementary school, they don't even cheat in singleplayer games, it's just absolutely laughable. Reports online are also numerous (and Riot never specifies what software led to the ban).

Anticheats should never be kernel level, it isn't as effective as people claim it to be but the trade off is massive, people reported performance problems in other games after installing the Vanguard anticheat, you can't run unsigned drivers (which can sometimes be tied to obscure but required hardware) not to mention the potential attack vector, there is a reason the Sony BMG rootkit is being brought up as a comparison (if you want two prime examples, in the first case Valorant/Vanguard has been known to just disable fan control software that it doesn't trust resulting in PCs overheating, in the second case aside from the Sony BMG debacle you have Genshin Impact's kernel level anticheat which was used for randsomeware purposes and all I can do is wonder why a singleplayer game without PVP needs a kernel level anticheat running 24/7).

So what is the solution to cheating? Well that is something that companies are still trying to figure out, even largely closed systems like consoles are eventually hacked and step by step instructions are sold that even a child can do (the cracks are already forming with for instance the recent PS5-IPV6-Kernel-Exploit).

Numbers matter. Val has at least 1000 times fewer cheaters than e.g. CS2 which has VAC which is considered a fucking joke. There can be no perfect anticheat but Val's one is good enough you can play without ever having an unfair fight against cheaters.

Again, Linux users who neither play nor grind online games opine. And I care not because unlike you I do play and I have experience to prove it.

But yeah, you can shit on Windows all you want when you got zero major triple A games for Linux anyways (aside from CS2 which is a joke under Linux because it's poorly optimized and exists just because Valve can) and anticheat for Linux is just impossible.

Enjoy no major multiplayer titles under Linux and continue to whine that "But mom it's not perfect under Windows either". Again, a fucking clownfest by those who reject the notion of closed source software.

And don't get me started that the vast majority of Linux users don't give a fuck about security and have a lot worse security than Windows because:

1. They normally disable Secure Boot
2. Their distro doesn't support Secure Boot anyways
3. Their distro doesn't use any signature verification for the kernel (which is a very weak protection but it can be enabled and exists e.g. in Fedora)
4. They download and run random software from Github/Gitlab repositories without having the means to check it for malware
5. They enable and install software from random PPAs without having the means to check it for malware
6. They use sudo sparingly without understanding when it's really needed
7. Sudo under Linux is a fucking joke as applications running under your account can sniff your sudo password. Yeah, even if you use Wayland. In Windows the UAC prompt is isolated from your user session and cannot be sniffed upon.

And every fucking month we have at least a couple of reports how various repos on GitHub/GitLab host malware.

Linux security, lmao. It's not security, it's obscurity. And you tell me about Windows kernel level anticheats/exploits/malware. Oh, boy.

And lastly I have friends who play Val and Genshin Impact. Weirdly, no malware, they've not been hacked, lost or leaked their data. Linux users absolutely love myths about Windows "insecurity". I've been using Windows since MS-DOS 5.0 and I've not had malware even once. Habits matter.

[cl333r]

Let's look at the share of Linux dektops/laptops:

Linux - 1.76
AMD 0405 in Linux - 0.35

1.76 * (1-0.35) = 1.135%

Not bad for a system that has everything better than the competition and is in addition free and present on steam for 10 years



The Chinese don't seem to like Linux on the desktop. On the other hand, they have made tremendous economic growth over the last 20 years.

Indians seem to like Linux on the desktop. And they have made many times less growth.

Could there be a correlation? The more the public uses from Linux the less economic growth they have .
(instead of focusing on the real work of its quality and productivity, it's millions of people wasting time solving problems that don't exist elsewhere)

Unless you're joking it's a prime case for "correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation".

Barely anyone likes desktop Linux if you move from mac or windows. I only moved from window$ (in 2007) because of viruses that made me reinstall Windows every week.

[Tuxee]

But yeah, you can shit on Windows all you want when you got zero major triple A games for Linux anyways (aside from CS2 which is a joke under Linux because it's poorly optimized and exists just because Valve can) and anticheat for Linux is just impossible.

Enjoy no major multiplayer titles under Linux and continue to whine that "But mom it's not perfect under Windows either". Again, a fucking clownfest by those who reject the notion of closed source software.

Ah. Avis frothing at the mouth again. Michael must love you for all the traffic your bullshit generates.
Anyway and JFTR: I have been playing War Thunder for about 10 years now and from what I can tell it is
1. Linux native,
2. employs EAC and
3. IS a major multiplayer title.

And now enjoy your fabulous Windows install and bugger off. Will you?