The way popular anti cheats work on linux varies, and not much, afaik, is precisely known about them.

Regardless of that... see my other post for 3 very widely used, very popular ACs which themselves state that they work on linux, have worked on linux for 3 years, that the support exists and all that has to be done is the game dev/management team to just say 'hey please enable this extra option for our game'.

I say 'very often' because some games use their own proprietary, in house anti cheat which, yes, does not even claim to support linux.

...But the existence of major AC providers that do support linux means that it is not impossible to do this, in fact its been possible for years.

Anyway, sure, none of this ultimately changes the fact that many of the most popular online games don't work on linux.

But it also doesn't change that for many of such games, literally all they'd have to do is check some boxes, at either 0 or negligible increased cost to themselves, to make this work.

Anyway, if you think most linux users are cheaters, I don't know what to tell you.

Using linux to game is pretty easy, low barrier to entry. Steam Decks are basically ready to go right out of the box. Even desktop distros geared toward gaming on linux, but also work well as a general OS are not too difficult to set up. Nobara has come a long way, PopOS! is easier to set up than Windows.

The technical know how to find and install a custom kernel is a much, much more complex task... and why would you even bother, when the vast majority of cheats/hacks/trainers are made for Windows, require far less technical know-how than setting up a custom linux kernel to use, and these routinely circumvent Anti Cheats all the time?