The mass exodus to Linux gaming is already causing a push back against kernel level anti-cheat.

People who 5 years ago didn't give a hoot about computing outside of running steam games are now actively discussing their favorite Linux distro and giving advice to friends and family about how to make the jump.

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herdymerzbow 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As much as I hope it to be mass exodus, and as someone who switched over to CachyOS as my main OS in Nov 2025, I'm not sure that 3% of the steam user base really qualifies as a 'mass' exodus.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Linux-gaming-growth-SteamOS-sh...

Going back to my Windows install every now and then to do things feels uncomfortable. Almost like I'm sullying myself! The extent of Microsoft's intrusiveness kind of makes it feel like entering a poorly maintained public space...at least compared to my linux install.

I'm not sure that the majority of people feel this way about Windows 11. They just put up with it in the same way as they do YouTube ads, web browsing without ublock origin, social media dark patterns etc. But certainly, never been a better time I think to move to linux for my kind of user, i.e. the only mildly technologically adept.

	▲	com2kid an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I'm not sure that 3% of the steam user base really qualifies as a 'mass' exodus. Major tech reviewers are talking about Bazzite. Reddit gaming forums are full of people talking about Win11 vs Linux. Microsoft only has two strangle holds on PCs - gaming and office apps. For home users they literally have 0 lock in now days other than familiarity. No one is writing native windows apps outside of legacy productivity apps and games. Even Microsoft is writing Windows components in React now days. I moved to Linux earlier this year and literally none of my apps were unavailable. Everything is a browser window now days. 15 years ago that would've been crazy, I had tons of native windows apps I used every day.
	▲	marcus_holmes an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah but which 3%? It's important. There are a lot of Steam gamers with 5 games in their library who log on once a month. There are a few Steam gamers with 5000 games in their library who are permanently logged in. There's folks who play one game obsessively, and folks who tinker around with many games. I'm willing to bet that the 3% are the kind of people who buy a lot of games. I'd love to see that "what percentage of games have been bought by people on which platform?" metric. I think it'd be a lot more than 3% on Linux, even if you count Steam Deck as a separate platform.

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Hikikomori 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Unfortunately Linux requires zero effter to create cheats on, might as well run no anti cheat. And the root stuff is overblown as user space programs can already read all your files and process memory of that user. How many bother with multiple users?

	▲	marcus_holmes an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not all gamers are playing games where cheating is an issue. It's really only the MOBA Call of Battlefield AAA crowd who care about that. That's not the largest group of gamers, and certainly not the largest market for games.
	▲	MindSpunk an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The push back on kernel level anti-cheat on security grounds has always felt odd to me. If you don't trust them to run kernel level code why do you trust them to run usermode code as your user? A rogue anticheat software could still do enormous damage in usermode, running as your user, no kernel access required. Being in kernel mode does give the rogue software more power, but the threat model is all wrong. If you're against kernel anti-cheat you should be against all anti-cheat. At the end of the day you have to chose to trust the software author no matter where the code runs.