this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
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Why support it? Their specialty is Linux.
Per the article:
So it looks like Valve is at least giving tools for running Windows on their hardware for those that really really want that kernel level malware, I mean anti-cheat, to play a certain game.
I was talking to a couple of people about my positive experience faming on Linux since I switched recently, and one of them seemed really interested since he hates Windows.
The other guy mentioned “But some games still don’t work. Certain multiplayer games have kernel-level anti-cheat that doesn’t work on linux.” and I saw the first guy visibly lose interest even though I would have bet money he was going to actually try linux before. So I asked him “Do you play competitive multiplayer games?” “No, not really.”
The fact that linux can’t run every game is apparently a turn-off for some people, even if they aren’t games they want to play.
The thing is that people don't want to get that new game that that seems so fun to find out that it doesn't actually work. Other games not working is seen as a sign of potential future trouble.
Yeah, it's not unreasonable, I had to bail on Forza Horizon 6 at launch, due to severe issues at launch, and the recent DOOM DLC has some visual bugs too (there's a PR in Mesa already!).
It's amazing it works this well, and the maintainers of these tools are incredible for getting fixes out so quickly when a new game launches with issues, but there are some unavoidable realities to not being the target platform.
I think the advantages are worth it, and completely deleted my Windows install earlier this year to fully commit, but it's naive to say that the experience is flawless and you won't ever have problems gaming. I can definitely be sympathetic to more casual players being put off by that.
The same people will generally accept that a ps4 game won't play on an xbox etc. So it is a bit odd.
That’s a bad analogy because 99% of the games that people play on steam machines will be Windows games, not Linux games. It’s an issue when you don’t know if a steam game will work on a steam machines, or any other PC game won’t work on your pc.
This is a genuine concern. Kernel level applications being required is not.
It is when the reason they don’t work on Linux is because it doesn’t support kernel level anti-cheat.
I mean, it's pretty easy to know. They have an icon directly next to the game that says what it works on.
You have just as much knowledge about if it'll work as you do based on hardware requirements. Which is to say "none, unless you look at the place where they tell you".
By this metric, 99% of games don't work on Linux. How is this helping?
Not sure where you're getting that. It's in excess of 25% that work specifically on the steamdeck, which is the easiest metric to see.
In any case, if the person is saying it's an issue because you don't know when buying a game, then it seems pretty relevant that you can know by simply "looking where you buy the game". If you Google it, you can find out with an even greater chance of discovering the answer is "yes".
Wow, love how when I want to play a new game I have to Google it every single time. Also the steam verification badge isn't accurate. They say Borderlands 4 can run on a steam deck while saying other working games are fully unsupported.
Last point, everybody keeps skirting around the fact that these kernel level anti-cheat games are multiplayer. People want to play with their friends, its that simple. For a lot of people it's their only point of contact with a friend. But yeah, lemme go change everything over to Linux now because 25% of steam games run on it.
You're kinda being a dick for no reason.
Someone said it's a turnoff because they have no idea. The information is as prominent as the rest of the system requirements. If you don't want to Google it, don't: you can just look at the system requirements. Other websites often have more detailed information about what system configurations a game works with. That's true for gpus through operating systems.
I didn't skirt around any point. I just didn't talk about it because that's not what I was responding to. Being upset that you might need to read information presented on the page where you buy a game is ridiculous.
I corrected the <1% number. That's not making any claims about the 25% number beyond "this is the accurate number and not the made up one".
I don't care what OS you use, games you play, who you play them with or your tolerance for 3rd party kernel modules. I think it's ridiculous to think that looking at supported configurations on the product page is "having no idea". I also think being upset at the prospect of googling a game's name is... A stretch.
Honestly, the kind of games that don't run on Linux, I usually don't want to play them anyway. Like League of Legends (shudders)
Exactly where I’m at. It’s not like we’re low on options.
I say leave those toxic users on windows. If that's the community they want to foster, be my guest. We'll be here building and providing simply because we're passionate and want to help.
gold
Just think of using Windows as being a cuck who is fine with your kernel getting a train run on it, every day, every night, all the time.
You literally don't even know by how many, who they specifically are.
But also, I'm sure its fine, no need for regular STD testing.
... not that it would even be possible.
Ironically, this is the way to do that. If you want to be more secure you only use Windows for those particular games and nothing else.
easy don't play those games
If I had to give up everything that doesn't work on Linux, I wouldn't bother having a computer. FOSS is commie garbage.
Are you a shitty bot or just a shitty troll? Every webservice you use is based on free/open software, without it you would be getting all the speed an reliability of Windows ME from your doom scrolling.
Are you a dumb dumb or an idiot? Web serving is one of the simplest jobs a computer can have. -Why wouldn't they choose the cheapest option? Wow.. gonna block you because arguing with an idiot is a waste of time.
Oohh, it's fun when technicially illiterate people think they're smart.
You just answered your own question and didn't notice.
You're right! The cheapest option is Linux. The reason Linux is cheap, reliable, and dominant across web infrastructure, cloud computing, and enterprise servers is because of the FOSS ecosystem you called "commie garbage." The Linux kernel, Apache, Nginx, OpenSSL, and basically every critical piece of web serving infrastructure are all FOSS projects maintained by the exact community you're attempting to insult.
You're using the output of FOSS to argue against FOSS. Every website you visit, every web service you use, the Lemmy instance you moderate your Linux-hating community on, all of it runs on "commie garbage."
The most disgusting part of it to me is not that you're failing to argue against FOSS. You're attempting to remove credit from the passionate and driven devs who built the infrastructure we use today. That's despicable, and entirely on brand for capitalist bootlickers. Capitalism builds nothing and simply repurposes and repackages the passion and labor of others by adding a new pricetag, subscription, or storefront. Maybe some DLC or microtransactions if we're feeling really greedy.
Do you even try to make sense?
Show me a AAA FOSS game. Even the FOSS games that come close had their engines donated. Professional production software like Adobe, Office, CAD - The industry runs on proprietary. Blender is probably the best thing you have, and it was practically donated too.
Notice you've completely abandoned the web serving argument. Can't defend it so you've moved on. We'll add that to the list, another goalpost flying by at mach speed. Wonder if they'll add it to Forza?
AAA FOSS games is a deliberately narrow target designed to sound convincing. The gaming industry's core infrastructure is heavily FOSS. The Linux kernel that Steam Deck runs on. Mesa graphics drivers. Vulkan. SDL. OpenAL. The entire graphics stack underneath every game including your precious AAA titles runs on "commie garbage." It's not whether the marketing budget and cutscenes of a AAA title are open source. It's whether the industry could function without FOSS infrastructure. It couldn't.
Once again, you do half the work for me. If FOSS is garbage why do commercial studios donate their engines to it? id Software open sourced Quake's engine. Epic contributes to open standards. Donations flow toward FOSS precisely because the commercial ecosystem benefits from shared infrastructure. You've just described companies recognizing the value of what you call "garbage."
Adobe and Office dominate through network effects and proprietary lock-in, not purely technical superiority. Quality? That's just an argument for switching costs. LibreOffice handles the vast majority of office tasks. DaVinci Resolve has a free tier that professional editors use for Oscar-nominated titles. The tools exist. The dominance is structural, not meritocratic. Capitalists do love to believe in their myths.
Blender is your worst example. Blender is in active production use at major studios, such as in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and is maintained by a foundation funded by Epic, Adobe, and Meta who pay for its development because building proprietary alternatives costs more. "Practically donated" is you accidentally describing why FOSS works. Companies fund it because the output is worth more than the cost of maintaining it. You make this SO easy.
You keep moving to new ground every time the current ground collapses. ECC. Abandonment. Web serving. Now games and Adobe. How many more before you answer the question of why you hate "FOSS commie garbage" so much but continue to avidly use and moderate on it?
I've done exactly that recently and it's been fun honestly. I've learned about so many projects and so many passionate people who just want to build things to help people. I've yet to have any crashes too, unlike windows, and I've seen a performance uplift of about 10-15%, mostly from all the background services no longer running and hogging resources. I'm even setting up a homelab to self host/provide my community with a way to replace other corporatized spyware like google's suite, discord, etc.
But yeah man, enjoy your capitalist slop, innovating the best ways to create problems and sell you solutions. Pay that subscription fee, buy another skin. I feel like I own my hardware again.
You do realize that Linux is intended to be run on ECC memory, while Windows has been built with many features to compensate and is therefore more resilient for almost all home users. Your anecdotes are funny because they lack all technical merit (typical Linux propaganda).
Even Linus Torvalds would shake his head at the nonsense LiGNUts put out there.
While calling Linux commie garbage. Dafuq?
You want technical? Let's go.
This is technically confused. ECC memory is error-correcting memory used in servers and workstations to detect and correct bit-flip errors. It's not a Linux requirement and Linux runs fine on non-ECC consumer hardware, the same hardware Windows runs on. It sounds like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what ECC is and/or what Linux is. Having worked at the architectural level in RAM addressing utilizing Hamming code to protect against sais bit flips, I've experience in this area. Linux runs on everything from Raspberry Pis to supercomputers to Android phones. Windows also supports ECC memory on compatible hardware. This isn't a Windows vs Linux distinction at all.
This is vague enough to be unfalsifiable. Features to compensate for what exactly? It certainly isn't memory usage or performance, that's for sure. Memory errors on non-ECC hardware affect both operating systems equally since that's a hardware limitation, not an OS one.
This is an appeal to authority but backfires. Linus Torvalds famously uses Linux exclusively (he prefers Fedora and is happy not being at the bleeding edge), advocates for it constantly, and has been publicly critical of proprietary software and Nvidia drivers. Invoking him as someone who would disapprove of Linux advocacy is an interesting choice, or an entirely uninformed one.
Someone who opens with that framing and then produces technically confused claims about ECC memory is not making a good faith technical argument. Linux, as a technology, is not political. You're working backwards from your own ideology using mental gymnastics to make uninformed claims in an attempt to support said ideology.
Here's a question for you. Why are you on Lemmy, "FOSS commie garbage" software, same as Linux?
Just fyi, you are talking to a nutter. That person created the linuxsucks community and seems to spend all waking (probably sleeping too) hours thinking about linux and how to get mad at linux. Don Quixote has nothing on this guy
Dayum, that's wild haha thanks.
Data integrity is a hardware problem, not an OS problem.
The myth that Linux is stable enough that you don't need ECC unless you're running ZFS or a database is wrong. A flipped bit corrupts memory before the OS sees it.
-ECC protects the OS. The OS cannot protect itself.
Windows has the most aggressive consumer‑grade fault‑tolerance stack with WHEA, bad‑page retirement, PCIe AER recovery, GPU/driver subsystem restart, VBS integrity enforcement, core offlining, and memory poisoning.
-These features dramatically reduce crashes on unreliable hardware.
ECC is the only one to detect single‑bit errors, correct single‑bit errors, detect multi‑bit errors, and prevent silent corruption from propagating. It's not 'Linux stability' - it's literally ECC (which most consumer desktops and laptops don't have)!
-Servers need ECC because server workloads demand correctness (and Linux doesn't even try to deliver that because they don't have to).
Cosmic rays, electrical noise, and manufacturing defects literally hit hardware, not software. -That famous blue screen in front of an audience during a Windows presentation? -Nothing to be ashamed about (but they could've used ECC)!
If the hardware lies, the OS has no way to know. Even Windows Server requires ECC. Enterprise Linux distros recommend ECC. It's about physics: not the OS.
Good, we've made progress. You now correctly describe what ECC does, which is accurate. Notice though that you've abandoned your original claim that "Linux is intended to be run on ECC memory" and replaced it with "servers need ECC." Those are completely different statements. The first one was wrong, like I refuted. You've just admitted it without saying so.
These are real but irrelevant to your original argument. Those features handle hardware errors after they occur. ECC prevents corruption before it propagates. They're not comparable. On non-ECC consumer hardware, Windows and Linux, and any other OS for that matter, are equally exposed to silent bit-flip corruption. Windows just surfaces the errors more visibly. That's better logging, not better physics.
Easily the most provably false thing you've said. Linux runs 100% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. It runs the majority of financial infrastructure, safety-critical systems, and enterprise servers globally. Correctness is literally the reason it dominates those environments. The idea that it doesn't try for correctness is not a technical position, it's just wrong. At this rate, are you applying for a position in the Trump admin? You'd fit right in for how confidently incorrect you are.
Also still waiting on that Lemmy answer. For someone so against "FOSS commie garbage" you seem pretty active on it, enough to make your own community and moderate it.
I admire your composure, knowledge and patience.
Thanks, I appreciate that! As part of my degree I worked on designing/building and addressing RAM and ROM so it's a particular area of interest of mine. I enjoyed building address hashes all the way up from NAND gates, to JK/D flip-flops, to eventually said RAM and ROM.
SearXNG also helps with searching and getting relevant articles and results, especially in comparison to Google these days haha.
Which I feel this person may read and believe articles like this thanks to AI 🙃
https://myshoesreview.com/flip-flops/is-ram-made-of-flip-flops/
If you're interested in what JK flip flops actually are:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/digital-logic/what-is-jk-flip-flop/
Random thought - do you use AI to author your comments/posts?
That bullshit never stopped anyone from cheating. Why is this even a thing?
they are probably just providing the windows drivers that their vendors already have for the components inside the hardware they're selling.
A big part of PCs is flexibility. I can run Fedora, Sally can run Mint, and Fred can run Windows. Contrast that with an Apple where you are stuck running Mac or some of the more proprietary software oriented vendors where the only way to use half your RGB and even display features is to run in Windows.
Personally? I run Linux. I am happy. But I also remember when we were happy that Google was focusing on "the open source" project "Android". And... we see how that went down. And with how many people think SteamOS is something unique and magical? I am happy now but I am definitely thinking about what 2030 will be (... if there is a 2030 but that is a different fear).
a lot of manufacturers are realizing that the OS is not profitable, just merely a vehicle to shove their products
the difference between Android and SteamOS is that SteamOS is funding FOSS devs who were already a part of the linux ecosystem and are contributing back to it
in contrast android built a walled garden while keeping the open source bits for theirselves
but yeah, its slightly possible that valve could become like google, but i heavily doubt it at the moment