ffhein

I was expecting more entries on a certain theme for version 420 ;)

Apex with EAC worked perfectly fine on Linux for the last 2 years, EA just decided to break it by replacing EAC with their own anti-cheat which is Windows only.

I think Microsoft and their partners have been dreaming about turning PCs into fully locked down platforms for a long time, completely unrelated to gaming. Hardware DRM including display devices and cables, and only running “trusted” software is the end goal.

I think the problem is that game publishers also want the cheapest and laziest solutions. What EA (and others) are doing now are basically “give us full control of your computer so we can do whatever we want” with their kernel level anti-cheats. Server side anti-cheat requires more processing that they have to pay for, and requires more work to develop heuristics and other algorithms to detect cheaters.

Would be interesting to know why some people downvoted this comment, if they think there’s some reason to not play The Finals on Linux. I’ve only done the tutorial so far, and the gameplay seems somewhat similar to Apex, it’s also f2p, and uses EAC so currently no issues with anti-cheat. Might not look like an indie game but it feels like a decent alternative to Apex.

Seems like my “fuck EA I’m not giving them money ever again” policy is beginning to pay off :)

I bought a Razer Basilisk 3 because it was the only mouse where I could reach both thumb buttons with the fingertip-ish grip I use. Wasn’t fully supported by Linux software at first, but worst case I could program it on Windows which I had on a dual boot at the time. Now that I can use it with Polychromatic and OpenRazer it even works better on Linux. On Windows the Razer software won’t let me save individual LED colours to the mouse, and needs to be running all the time in order to do that…

My guess is that Microsoft will provide their own kernel level anticheat to game developers, using a secure API which will be impossible to emulate with Wine etc.

We just had Windows Update brick itself due to a faulty update. The fix required updating them manually while connected to the office network, making them unusable for 2-3 hours. Another issue we’ve had is that Windows appears to be monopolizing virtualization HW acceleration for some memory integrity protection, which made our VMs slow and laggy. Fixing it required a combination of shell commands, settings changes and IT support remotely changing some permission, but the issue also comes back after some updates.

Though I’ve also had quite a lot of Windows problems at home, when I was still using it regularly. Not saying Linux usage has been problem free, but there I can at least fix things. Windows has a tendency to give unusable error messages and make troubleshooting difficult, and even when you figure out what’s wrong you’re at the mercy of Microsoft if you are allowed to change things on your own computer, due to their operating system’s proprietary nature.

Already? I’m still using Fedora 39 since that’s the only version supported by CUDA Toolkit :S

On Linux, AMD GPUs work significantly better than Nvidia ones. If you have a choice, choose an AMD

Unless you’re interested in AI stuff, then Nvidia is still the best choice. Some libraries are HW accelerated on AMD, and hopefully more will work in the future.

Not entirely clear but perhaps OP is talking about blocking unwanted outgoing reqjests? E.g. anti-features and such since they mention traffic from their apps.

I’ve never got my Vive to work well in Linux, even though I’m using X which supposedly still is better for gaming that Wayland.

The only certification I have is from the Kansas City Barbeque Society, allowing me to act as a judge in BBQ competitions.

Things are probably different nowadays, but at least 15-25 years ago you could just apply for IT jobs and if someone lied about their skills it would hopefully show during the technical interviews. I don’t know if that counts as getting in very early.