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- Hacker News
- Made the switch to Mint recently. Steam says that of 750 games on my account, 748 can run on Linux, and I've had no problems with the dozen or so I've played lately.by swilliamsio
- > 748 can run on Steam Assuming you mean on Linux?by kurtoid
- Biggest hurdle for me to do this is just multiplayer games. I wish Linux would offer a solution to that. No idea what it would look like though.
Contrary to most Linux advocates I’m a big believer in giving studios the tools they need to defeat cheaters and I don’t care much about system integrity if it means fairer games.
by lwansbrough - Who exactly is "Linux"? What entity, specifically, would work on kernel anti-cheat? The only realistic company who would care about this is Valve. So really you should say Valve, not Linux.
That's the biggest problem with Linux on the desktop: outside of Red Hat and Canonical (neither of whose business has anything to do with gaming), there is basically no well-funded company that cares about it at all. Linux already works great for the use cases that matter to the people who develop Linux, who mostly are not trying to compete with Microsoft or Apple.
- Even on Windows they are losing despite the invasive anticheats.
I suspect the answer to cheating will ultimately be big brother and hiding information from the client.
The server should stop sending positions of undetected enemies - this requires rethinking game engines due to the predictions they perform.
The server should log every single action by every single player (full replays) in perpetuity, train models on it to detect outliers, classify some outliers as cheaters and start grouping them all together in lobbies.
Another idea would be to conduct automated experiments on players at random. Such as manifesting "fake" entities behind cover and measure player reactions - of which there should be none. Spawn bots (from the beginning of the game) that a compromised client (cheats) cannot discriminate from players and have them always remain in cover and gauge player behavior relative to them, despawn them if a [presumably real] player is about to detect them.
It all requires work and imagination which is in short supply in the industry. But given how cheaters kill certain types of games maybe someone will eventually do it.
by coppsilgold - > I wish Linux would offer a solution to that. No idea what it would look like though.
It probably would have to be an isolated environment to run in. Something like the Secure VM efforts adopted for desktops, perhaps with a small trusted hypervisor instead of CPU vendor extensions. Anything else I can think of starts to restrain what software you can run on your machine, or becomes highly invasive in ways similar to Anti-Cheats on Windows, both of which would be rejected by the general Linux community. (Through, it's not like anyone was asking Microsoft either before implementing anti-cheat and trampling on system integrity, at least until Microsoft started requiring signed drivers)
However, given that a generic blackbox implementation enables DRM and binary encryption there will probably still be opposition. It gets particularly nasty if it's given access to something like a full TPM to unlock application data in the same way a TPM can unlock an encrypted drive for your OS. That would make it the penultimate closed source application, which is really anti-ethical to a number of communities. (open source, modding, game/app preservation...)
by srjek - Well, the beauty of Linux is that anyone can go implement whatever features they want. But, I’m very happy that folks aren’t very interested in supporting this kernel level DRM stuff.by bee_rider
- >No idea what it would look like though.
It looks like attestation. Linux needs to be able to assure game developers that the kernel their game is running on is actually protecting the security of their game.
by charcircuit - The only sure-fire way to defeat cheats is with something like Counter Strike's overwatch system: have humans vet replays. Cheats are a ludicrous business, there is simply far too much incentive to defeat software-based systems.by zamalek
- Totally agree, but it seems like competitive games have solved it. CS2 (VAC), The Finals (EAC), and Overwatch 2 (Warden) all run flawlessly on Linux.by paulbgd
- The anti-cheat creators other than Valve aren't bothered to invest into making a Linux kernel anti-cheat, and most Linux users would be unwilling to allow one to be installed either.by ajvs
- Evidently it's not all Steam Deck either; I checked our internal stats and on PC yesterday 1.24% of Warframe players were using WINE and another 0.76% were playing on Deck!by shaggie76
- I’ll never forget a rep from Warframe joined the teamspeak server I was in for a Planetside 2 group back in 2012 to pitch us on playing the game. :)by mentos
- Cool! I have fond memories of playing Warframe on Linux with my 1050ti ~5 years ago.
Kudos to the team for keeping us in the loop, I apologize for the strange crashlogs my OOM killer sent.
by bigyabai - Just want to say that a decade ago Warframe was the first game I ever played on WINE when I was first learning Linux in school. If it hadn't been so friendly and easy to keep playing I wouldn't have the skills and job I do today. Thank you!by matoro
- I zeroed my (last ever) Windows gaming rig just yesterday. I’ve been eyeing Bazzite but ended up going with Pop, since I’ve previously had good experience on it with Nvidia.
What finally let me do it was moving all my social gaming to PS5. Ime it’s really only games with anti-cheat requirements that can be a crapshoot on Linux. I can’t really recall ever running into other issues with anything on my (Linux-based) Steam Deck over the past couple of years. I’ve emigrated from my home country so gaming is important to me as a way of staying in touch with friends and family - something I wasn’t willing to risk by switching away from a working setup. A PS5 is a convenient and reasonably economical way to address that.
Feels pretty great to know that after 40+ years of relying on it - some good but a lot bad - I’ll never have to touch Windows again.
by darkteflon - Steam and Ubuntu has worked really well for me, big picture mode + hdmi switch has made for a very-close-to-console experience
I am playing mostly single player campaign type games (Assassins creed, RDR2, etc) which certainly improves the picture.
If steam really wanted to put a knife in games on windows, it would develop an anticheat and give it away for free. That is AFAICT the only thing keeping people on windows for modern, multiplayer games.
by Hasz - Consoles also bring a lot of headache when it comes to modding, though.by int_19h
- I really wish there was an (k)Ubuntu-like Linux distro - apt-based, semi-annual updates, kde default or selectable - but without all the stupid Ubuntu-isms like snap and alpha quality rust coreutils and whatnot. I run Gentoo and Debian for myself, but I'd like something normie-friendly I can put on other peoples machines and not get a ton of support questions.by encom
- Reliable Anticheat rootkits are just not possible on Open PC platforms. Consoles should just add proper keyboard+mouse support and competitive online players can move over...by happosai
- It's weird how Steam doesn't automatically set the toggle that lets you play most Windows games through Proton instead of having that be an opt-in you need to know about. It really is extremely stable and polished these days.
- They doby andoando
- I've only ever needed to enable Proton for non-Steam games. Are there Steam games that don't have Proton enabled and need it to be manually enabled by the user? (I've only used it on the Steam Deck)by Rohansi
- I just wish they had to toggle to use proton by default for all games, regardless of if a Linux version exists. There have been several games where I ended up with the buggy abandoned Linux version (Rocket League is a particularly egregious example of this) instead of the much better supported Windows + Proton version.by worble
- by davet91
- 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck.by haunter
- That is incredible! If you had asked me I would have guessed at least 80% were from Steam OS handhelds.by DanielHB
- > 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck.
If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false:
1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam.
2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been sold by the third anniversary of the device in February 2025.
27% of 4M gives us 1M Steam Deck + Legion users. Yet 4M were sold. That begs the question: How could it be? Do 75% of Steam Deck users run Windows? Have 75% of Steam Decks ended up in the landfill? Are the sale figures estimates wildly off-base?
by tredre3 - I was really proud that my kids (8,10,12) all have used linux for gaming for the last several years. Steam runs perfectly for most games.
And, they know how to to use "flatpak update" to update the sober runtime for Roblox (I know this is not steam, but it is an example of how well other things run on linux). I'm so proud (and ashamed they play Roblox, but choose your battles).
But, Fortnite.
I tried to run a Windows VM, but that was a poor substitute.
Is there an option for Fortnite on Linux?
by xrd - The problem is DRM, so there is no good answer.by zamadatix