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Quoting: _MarsMaybe some form of remote attestation

No no no no no. That sorta kinda kills the purpose of using linux, plus I need out of tree or custom kernel modules on all PCs I use for at least 1 piece of hardware.

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"I believe it when I see it" kind of situation.
But I had "one large company will at least consider porting their anti-cheat to SteamOS/Linux" on my bingo card, so I'm at least intrigued. Fingers crossed.

But I wonder what the approach will be. They say Linux instead of just SteamOS, so it seems to be a more general solution instead of just focusing on Valve's hardware which is great. And they don't explicitly state kernel level for Linux either(but who knows).

Maybe they'll work together with Valve to provide some kernel module without giving full access to every company. Maybe some form of remote attestation that can later be integrated into other distros?

I'm not gonna get too excited until we actually see some results. But I'll be cautiously optimistic.
I'll gladly reinstall BF1 or Garden Warfare 2 if they go through with it. And maybe they'll bring the Apex Legends devs to adopt this anti-cheat as well.

This could be what many of us have been waiting for. If one company goes through with it, I imagine others will follow.
Let's hope for the best.

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Political theater

Really don't see how they can enforce it, particularly on linux distros

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Nice. This and their - as far as I have seen - great modding support hopefully creates a sizable modding community.

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I still think that things like these should be responsibility of parents and not state. I don't really understand all the "Protect the children" laws as they are usually just a way of control in disguise.

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My understating of the mandate is the same as Jef's and I do think that all the legislators thought of is that a responsible parent, setting the account for their kid, would put a real birth date, which would then be used by apps to decide what content to serve. There are just two tiny problems - it will be facile to circumvent by any half-brained kid, and it will be heavily abused by app providers by shaping the content (especially ads) depending on the age bracket. All around a shitty idea, but completely in line with the times we live in.

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Hoping this is Valves answer to the Stop Killing Games campaign. Which would explain the focus on offline play, but may not be limited to it.

Which could mean it will not be an isolated event.

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I hope they remove Enigma from other games as well.

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That's interesting, I thought CS2 and CSGO are the same game, just rebranded.

I suppose it would be good to have CSGO available with just community servers, similar to CS Source and CS 1.6.

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Obviously not a fan of kernel level stuff (and who knows how their implementation will work), but it's great for Linux adoption. I mean how often did we hear "Yeah, but can it play Multiplayer XYZ like on console?"

One argument less against Linux and something like the Steam Machine. Will be interesting to see how this is developing.

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Nice, I would like to be able to play Battlefield and EA Sports FC on my Linux computer

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Coming soon from EA, Linux "battlefield VIII Doritos Baja Blast edition" kernel to play the latest gaming slop.

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It wouldn't surprise me if they still have the idea that they could make some sort of integration into the Linux kernel to make it as "safe" as the windows version. They might be possible if you limit yourself to a single target (like Steam Deck), but I don't think it is feasible in general.

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Okay, I gotta admit: I didn't expect that o_O

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It makes sense if you consider that Americans BigTechs (Apple, Google and Microsoft) are trying to lobbying all the Governments worldwide for their anti-competitive practices.

Comment found it on the web:

Since Apple and Google convinced the whole world that "app stores" are the only way to install software, that means according to politicians, every computer must verify age. For the app store that everyone must be using.

An app store is an anti-competitive moat, designed to use censorship to optimize the profits of a company. The government has now enshrined into law a protection for these quasi-monopolies. Of course "they're not a monopoly" because "there are two companies". But we didn't used to need app stores at all. Computers used to allow anyone to install and run anything they wanted. Not anymore though. You will only do what The Companies allow you to, because Profits.

This is the only sensible comment I see in this thread. I would just add Microsoft to the list, as they are still trying to enforce their ecosystem (failing repeatedly of course, but still trying).

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Quoting: CaldathrasThis looks like it could be fun, especially if it sticks to real species instead of made-up ones.

It has admittedly been a while since I last played, but I'm fairly sure Megaquarium uses all real species.

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Quoting: gbudny@Hamish

Thank you for the article.

Can you play Quake: The Offering for Linux with GeForce2 MX 400?

Quoting: dubigrasuThat Nvidia white splash brings back sweet memories, the first "serious" card that I used for gaming on Linux was a Geforce4 MX, and it was the card I used to play Doom 3 with.

You reminded me of how painful it was to play Quake 4 on Linux with this graphics card back in 2005. I remember that Doom 3 didn't have a better performance, but it was a long time ago. I started to enjoy playing both games when I had a more modern computer with an Intel 2 Core Duo.

Well, at the ridiculous (as we see it now) resolution of 640x480 it wasn't that bad. Probably the framerate wasn't also that great, but something like 30 fps was so sweet for a PS1 player like me, accustomed with 24 fps or less, add some overclocking, some graphical tweaking, the TV placed 2 meters away (less sensitive to low fov and fps)...it was great! 😄

From what I understand Quake 4 was more graphically intensive than Doom 3, but I did played it with the same card (...I think?), both awesome games. Apparently these Linux versions had some features disabled, which would explain them running better on Linux, but my eyeballmeter couldn't see a difference back then. It still was a blast.

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Quoting: Mountain ManTo be fair, we're still far behind Europe where you can and will be arrested for posting "offensive" messages on social media.

You can be punished for say calling someone an a**hole. Not for stating an actual opinion. (You do not really believe that a person is a backside - it's not an opinion, it's all insult.) I fail to see a problem with that.

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Quoting: omer666My Linux PC at the time was a Pentium III too, but it was equipped with a Matrox G200, which I was very satisfied with. I don't really remember what kind of performance I was getting though...

[Edit] Or maybe it was a G400... now I can't remember 😅

On my list of nice to haves would be, alongside any kind of Voodoo card to experiment with, a Matrox G400 Max as it seems like it would be a good showcase of the best the free graphic stack was capable of at the time. Good luck not breaking the bank on any of those though.

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Quoting: hell0And the return of that api can only be changed with root access to the device.

And that will never be true either. Because what API it calls is a browsers / apps decision. It can always return yes and never ask the OS. So getting a portable version of a browser always saysing yes is done half asleep by kids.

It is not a sane implementation. It is plain stupid.

Because it does nothing. And it does not put any responsibility to the device owner. The responsibility is there already. It just puts more information to companies, and more control to big tech, and less freedom to people.

Politics is always about power. Do not let nice words mince your thoughts. It is never about you. me or any people. It is just about power and influence, by any means necessary to get this power.

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I had an MX 400 but that was in a PowerMac G4 Superdrive.
It was the very first proper GPU I ever owned, and as an OEM offering, it was very capable.
I ended up replacing it with the mighty ATI Radeon 8500 which was in another league...

My Linux PC at the time was a Pentium III too, but it was equipped with a Matrox G200, which I was very satisfied with. I don't really remember what kind of performance I was getting though...

[Edit] Or maybe it was a G400... now I can't remember 😅

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Nice, with that, the game returns to my wishlist (after a long abscence).

I'm in no hurry to buy though, for one thing, this is a remake of a game that I felt was already "modern enough" with the 2014 windows-HD release.

For another thing, unlike many, I never felt this title "stood out" that much among the RE-games. Finally, due to the prolonged use of DRM, this version already feel like quite an "old title" (relativly speaking)

So...cheap enough price and I'll buy at some point.

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Quoting: LinasMost likely they realized that it did not protect anything either.

The publisher pays for DRM. Those numbers likely stopped making sense.

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It starts with asking for your birth date, but how long before they want more - and for other places to create similar laws? It's a slippery slope.

No, it's not a slippery slope. Please stop spreading this fallacious argument. Many politicians in the US and abroad are pushing for actual ID scanning now. CA could've done that here if that was truly their endgame.

If age verification systems of some kind are inevitable (and this blog has speculated in the past that they are) then this is the most privacy-respecting solution that has been legislated so far to my knowledge. An on-device and completely fungible input of some kind that is then abstracted before being broadcast elsewhere. It's so privacy-respecting that it's actually completely useless if the parent doesn't set up the device before the kid uses it.

We'd much rather have this law become the model than the laws similar to what Texas and the UK have passed, where they want each individual website to separately verify ages by having the user give them personally-identifiable information like IDs and selfies. This would lead to dozens of companies and "trusted partners" handling personally-identifiable information in potentially wildly differing ways. Such a situation nearly guarantees this info getting leaked on a long enough timeline.

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I really wasn´t expecting this.

The game was already great. With automation it might become one of the greatest.

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I've moved my desktop PC to the living room, and missing the HTPC feeling. I might give Bazzite a spin to have consistency with the Deck.

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I believe this is among the most sane implementation of age gating I've seen so far.

As defined, it can be (should be) entirely on device and only provides the relevant info. The responsibility falls with the device owner to perform the age check and not some dodgy third party.

Sounds like a much better solution than most parental control softwares available today, which are either invasive, fallible or both. Instead of a website/program displaying a popup "are you over X" it'd call an api which answers yes/no. And the return of that api can only be changed with root access to the device. I really don't see any harm in that, it does not provide any more info than you already do when answering the same age popup on steam/a porn website/etc.

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Quoting: CaldathrasIronically, before I discovered that Linux was viable, I had always used ATI GPUs in my gaming rigs. I suspect that a big part of my choice was that ATI was Canadian.

Yep, ATI cards seemed to be more common out here in Alberta largely for that reason too I suspect, in comparison to Nvidia or even 3dfx at least based on what my family encountered while working in IT. Granted, they were not putting Voodoos in many business or home user machines. But we have salvaged many a Radeon card.

Quoting: gbudnyCan you play Quake: The Offering for Linux with GeForce2 MX 400?

Yep, it runs just the same as with the Rage 128 Pro, you are limited to the glquake.glx binary for 3D acceleration.

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@Hamish

Thank you for the article.

Can you play Quake: The Offering for Linux with GeForce2 MX 400?

Quoting: dubigrasuThat Nvidia white splash brings back sweet memories, the first "serious" card that I used for gaming on Linux was a Geforce4 MX, and it was the card I used to play Doom 3 with.

You reminded me of how painful it was to play Quake 4 on Linux with this graphics card back in 2005. I remember that Doom 3 didn't have a better performance, but it was a long time ago. I started to enjoy playing both games when I had a more modern computer with an Intel 2 Core Duo.

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I can't help but read that headline as "Resident Evil 4 remake has enema, protector DRM removed" 💩

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