Why GPU Passthrough Is Not Worth It ...

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► Chapters:
00:00 - Incompatible Windows Games
00:34 - What's the deal with Anti Cheat?
02:30 - What is GPU Passthrough?
03:21 - It's not a Silver Bullet
04:47 - Anti Cheat is not the only issue
07:16 - Conclusion
••••••••••••••••••••
► Description Tags:
linux gpu passthrough windows vm, windows gaming vm on linux with gpu passthrough, linux gpu passthrough gaming, linux gpu passthrough one gpu, gpu passthrough, gpu passthrough gaming, gpu passthrough linux gaming, linux anti cheat, linux gaming anti cheat, michael horn
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#linux #gaming #virtualization

[@dogspirit149]

I used to rely on dual-booting for games that weren't compatible with Linux. After a few years, I simply stopped buying those games, so I rarely need to boot into Windows anymore.

[@MichaelNROH]

Basically the reason why I removed Windows altogether. More SSD space, yay

[@FunFreakeyy]

The way to go. We have so many great games nowadays that most people won't even have the time to play them all.

[@lm4122]

@@MichaelNROH less spyware :) "safer" computer.

[@iKXWISH]

I keep Windows on a separate drive I manually have to switch because laptop 😅

[@KarbonBlack]

I got banned permanently on Apex Legends because I played on Linux. Tried to appeal more than 10 times but they won’t hear me. Over 1400 hours of game (and money) lost.

[@Shadowofthedark847]

Truely an "EA" move.

[@fabricio4794]

You Aint Loose Nothing .Todays Multliplayer is pure boredom..

[@SlyNine]

@@fabricio4794 that's your opinion tho. Clearly he did like the game.

[@Noriaela]

The joys of Apex "working" on Linux is dealing with Linux users getting bans every few months.

[@somone799]

Damn I thought apex can be played and is supported on Linux???

[@iFlxy]

Call me a corporate shill, but I think the only single company that ever would want to put even more money into Linux Anti-Cheats is Valve. We won't make that big of an impact on the gaming industry by refusing to play those games that don't work on Linux. I'm waiting for another Linux-focused device from Valve, and I hope they will have something ready...

[@RealJonzuk]

i would delete steam if it wasnt for everything theyve done for linux i seriously do not regret my purchases on steam even though half the games i dont play happy to have supported them also i bough ta ton of csgo keys back as a kid

[@MichaelNROH]

Vacnet is supposedly running on deep-learning (and probably AI soon) so we'll see if it's actually gonna become good over time. Money wise, Valve should have the resources to compete with with cheat makers in that regard.

[@skelebro9999]

Cannot disagree with that. No company has done anything for Linux besides Valve. Our only real option is to wait for the few but still an amount of Windows users to finally make the switch.

[@blue_pingu]

@@skelebro9999 Casually ignoring codeweavers, redhat, canonical, google, microsoft, and many more companies that have contributed to linux

[@sergeykish]

​@@skelebro9999Red Hat provided support on server, Ubuntu made a lot to popularize Linux desktop, Mozilla liberated web from IE6, CodeWeavers made Wine, Google made Chrome, Android and CromeOS.

[@oscarfiala2104]

I was literally trying to pass-though a gtx 650 ti in arcolinux just now.

[@MichaelNROH]

Perfect

[@skelebro9999]

Yo! I use ArcoLinux too!

[@Flackon]

Good. Go for it. Best of both worlds.

[@farrellazhar]

and I'm just done Passthrough my GPU and watch this video, what a coincidence

[@G1esas]

Fedora 39 (at moment of tinkering the VM) - Nvidia rtx 4060 - single gpu passtrough. I simply passed entire gpu to the vm, and when i launch it, linux simply "logging me off", and launching the vm. After shuting down VM, im on the gnome login screen. In my case gpu passtrough was very easy, and not messing with anything important. I have special kvm settings that passedtrough my entire pc to the vm, and i've managed to play fortnite without 1 tiny monitor issue (but i think that was just on me thing). If you wanna do a gpu passtrough, do it only with 2 gpu's (apu + gpu / gpu + gpu)

[@tomklein6540]

Care to share that KVM xml? :) in the process of trying this too.

[@cauals4719]

.

[@ThecatThecat-hq1op]

I use complicated audio software for music production, maybe that will be reliable on linux some day. I prefer to have a VM with passthrough so I can use GPU acceleration and so I don't need to have windows on bare metal. This also makes it easier for me since I don't need to reboot my computer every time I want to make music (like I would if I used dual booting).

[@jorge86rodriguez]

I was tempted to do it but it was easier to stop playing the few games with kenel anti cheat that did not work. They are not that great and there are alternatives, I only miss rainbow six siege but meee it is just one game.

[@gorrumKnight]

I have a dual GPU system, so I just pass my bigger GPU in and for WINE I just specify the beefy boi.

[@mariocraft95]

I have a GPU pass through set up. I pass in my old GTX 1080 into it that I set up. I don’t use it for gaming. I just use it to have a great experience having a windows computer to use or remote into using Remote Desktop. Definitely difficult to do, and you need a powerhouse computer to accomplish it effectively, but for most people, I just recommend dual booting (which I still have set up, just rarely use anymore)

[@Dream_scape47]

Soon game companies will ban your account if you don't have the latest TPM, this is how they force to upgrade your hardware

[@MichaelNROH]

Yeah, but on the other hand, this stuff moves very slowly. TPM 2.0 has been around for 10 years and even "fast" PCs back then are now very slow

[@pacifico4999]

If your machine doesn't have TPM, it's so old that it won't even run Valorant probably

[@cameronbosch1213]

I'm shocked how they get away with installing rootkits on users computers. Microsoft probably paid them.

[@123hopsy]

Some games already ban you if you change your hardware, I wouldn't be surprised

[@cameronbosch1213]

@123hopsy That sounds borderline illegal. How do those games even have more than 10 players!?

[@skelebro9999]

As someone who plays a few games with kernel level anti-cheat, it's not that big of a deal for me. I have Windows dual booted with Arch (by the way) and it's kinda nice having a separate gaming and production system for about an year and it works fine without major issues. It's a little less secure than using a VM but it just works and that's what matters to me.

[@4.0.4]

Kernel-level anti-cheat is honestly something I wish would be made illegal under some EU anti-spyware legislation. Just being unavailable in EU means the whole world sometimes, as companies don't want to develop two separate solutions.

[@packetcreeper]

Thanks for answering my questions! Instead of utilizing a VM running Linux and GPU passthrough I'm just going to install Linux on my old gaming rig to test my games. I REALLY don't want to move to Windows 11.

[@alecmackintosh2734]

If you set up the vm properly you don't have to worry too much about 2 operating systems fighting over resources. Most programs don't use many threads so if you isolate the cpus, you can run a lot of stuff in parallel, it's one way to take advantage of the silly trend of having like 32 threads on a single cpu.

[@user-ko9qy5st9i]

I use single GPU-Passthrough on my (Ubuntu) server and not on my desktop PC, since like you said, it makes the system pretty unstable (especially if a desktop needs to run on it). I use it for running a Windows VM for gaming (but only if I really don't get it running on Linux) or in case I find an application, that doesn't run on Linux (which is very unlikely). And the other thing I use it for is an AI VM, because I messed up the NVidia drivers with CUDA so often, that I don't want to set it up on the host. The only problem I have is the idle power draw of my GPU in the server, when it has no driver associated (the server is not only used for VMs), which is around 50W (instead of the 8-12W in idle with the driver). As GPU I use an RTX 3060 which was left over after I "upgraded" to an RX 6750XT in my main system.

[@mexicanhalloween]

I tried this a couple years ago when the 5700G came out. I had a Windows VM with a dedicated SSD and 3070 passed through, but I was only getting maybe 60% of bare metal performance after a couple months of trying to refine the performance. Proton made this completely unnecessary as I was able to get 90%+ of bare metal performance and it has only gotten better in the past couple years, to the point where it's mostly negligible, so I haven't used Windows since.

[@TrueGamerX14]

I had this exact issue for a while now D: this is the only reason I cannot daily drive Linux. I play too many multiplayer games with anti-cheats. I wanna try something else; run Linux on a VM within Windows but Wayland stuff were a nightmare under VMware or VirtualBox. Two computer solution is all I have for now heh

[@nadtz]

Different reasons for me but this is what I did as well. Got a mini pc and run windows on that, main machine runs Pop Os. Already had a spare monitor so all in it was about $300 for the mini which isn't terrible.

[@lightshark8562]

Can you do a updated Guide for Dual Booting with Windows 11 (and all the things convigured you need for VANGUARD and other Anticheat - like secure boot) and Linux (e.g. Fedora 40). And some safe practices (like using 2 drives, or other things I don't know of) so Linux or Windows cannot/won't kill each other with every update?

[@cameronbosch1213]

Don't play that game. It is a rootkit trojan.

[@lightshark8562]

@@cameronbosch1213 Well I don't, but I have some friends that play League of Legends and maybe there are some of us out there kept on Windows only as they don't know how to properly dual boot (like me I do not trust my knowledge enough to dual boot with tpm etc. and stay Windows only for now on my gaming system)

[@fabricio4794]

​@@cameronbosch1213All Closed Sofweare Games are Malware

[@MrVampify]

I mainly game on my steamdeck now. I have what used to be my main PC as a dedicated VR/games server that I steamlink to whenever I want to play a game that needs a windows install due to DRM or anti-cheat. Now I daily drive my nixos laptop, game on steamdeck, and have my windows PC I remote to whenever I need windows. It's pretty much exclusively a VR machine.

[@RaveYoda]

I've been using GPU passthrough to do things like playing and making mods for Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (Classic). But, the game now plays pretty well on Linux and Steam without. And many games I play just work on Linux now so haven't used it as much. The mod tools though do pose some issues still.

[@MichaelNROH]

What I have seen from other's that use mod launchers is, that you often need to adjust the case sensitivity setting as many mods like to name the "same" directories with lower or upper letters.

[@SMNFXCN]

little rant i guess. I don't even consider anti-cheat games on VMs because I wouldn't want to lose my accounts. I just play anti-cheat stuff on a console. It just works. If anything i just wanted a better performing Windows VM and it sucks how pass-through works with an Nvidia Optimus laptop without a mux switch. The whole process of doing it is a headache and it feels like you lose functionality from your GPU just for that to work... I'd rather use WINE if at all possible, it's just not everything works as it's specifically designed for windows. Most games I run work on Linux. I'm just referring to niche stuff old peripherals, or certain software/drivers that rely on Windows. or specific Windows software that does not have a good enough Linux alternative (paintdotnet / premiere etc.) Also weird how a lot of software that is used for modding games is not built for Linux. Always windows binaries, if not a python script. I love Linux, i want it to improve. But these are still issues that make me keep around a dual boot, or hardware exclusively for windows. I'm so tired of the dying grasp of windows...

[@stoino1848]

Great video! In the beginning of my Linux Gaming journey I was also tempted to pass through a GPU to a win vm. In the end - at least back then - it was not worth my effort. Luckily for me, the games I play dont have kernel level anti cheat. On the anti cheat topic: there was a recent linux podcast with GloriousEggroll and they claimed overall tempering with anti cheat on linux is probably even harder due to the details in wine itself. I hope kernel level anti cheat will die soon and be replaced by AI. It should be doable to train and AI to detect cheating, even on server-side.

[@MichaelNROH]

I'm not sure if AI is the solution here as it can be heavily influenced by cheat makers (at least if some data is being pulled online). It's AI against AI whereas one side could potentially influence the other side at some point

[@stoino1848]

@@MichaelNROH training need to be done by the game dev of course. So the data set would be curated. I agree, if it is only being trained on live data it would we easy to manipulate. But moving it to the server side is imo the way to go. Wasn't it MSI who showed this enhanced monitor which can analyze the screen and display arrows towards enemies locations (for Dota or lol) ?

[@sensor]

Perfect video, because I thought virtualization was a silver bullet for gaming. Now I will always dualboot my machine if I want to play.

[@IfritBoi]

Multibooting and containers will always be the main way to do anything involving incompatible software and games. Would still experiment with KVMs on other distros though since it would be overkill to run multiple distros on a boot manager rather than an easy and safe to configure QEMU setup that can be reserved and deleted at any time. Windows will always be finicky on emulation though so having a native OS is always handy to have imo

[@rag3z706]

I have been using a VM with single GPU passthrough for years now, and yeah it kinda sucks. I used to be able to play games like Rainbow 6, but one day battleye updated, and now it detects my vm. Anti-cheat developers actively go after VM users, and I have given up the cat and mouse game. I still refuse to use windows natively, so the only option really is to just give those games up. All I use my VM for is VR, which works perfectly fine with oculus link. Nvidia GPUs have always been more of a pain to passthrough, but adding a few extra lines in the vm config along with patching the rom, and its the same experience as AMD.

[@xNaxdy]

kernel-level anti cheat is actually a lot more powerful than root privileges on linux. root is still within userspace, but kernel code executes at the, well, kernel level, giving it *direct* access to the hardware, which root only has through interacting with the kernel, so there is a layer of abstraction in between. root cannot for example tell the graphics card to overvolt itself and die (unless the graphics driver allows it), but a kernel module absolutely could. the big problem with kernel-level anti cheat is that if it has a bug, there is a real risk of it permanently damaging your actual hardware. with userspace programs, the worst that could happen is it deletes all your files, which don't get me wrong is bad, but not as bad as destroying your actual physical PC components.

[@onegabriel5823]

If you happen to have 2 GPUs it's still nice to have a VM with one of those passed through to have access to Windows only programs with properly working GPU acceleration.

[@vladislavkaras491]

Thanks for the video!

[@chaosmaou]

There are binaries for Easy Anti Cheat for Linux. Some games like Squad properly implement the functionality and fully work in Linux, but some developers sadly choose the not support Linux even though it can be done.

[@MichaelNROH]

Yes

[@vanodon2257]

VMs are the only way I can play tarkov, siege, and league. Yes its like installing gentoo level of config for hardening a VM for games to actually work. But its better than running Windows on bare metal. Is it worth the time investment... Well....

[@Reichstaubenminister]

Is there a specific guide you followed or just trial and error? I tried many times to fully hide the VM, but there was always something that didn't work.

[@vanodon2257]

@@Reichstaubenminister Asked around Security research communtiy. Said i was researching ransomware that kept detecting it was in a VM. The CPU behavior is the main difficulty hiding the VM.

[@the_real_isco2146]

So let's say I want to try a linux distro on a VM but can't use GPU passthrough because I got a single GPU setup, is there a way to know how the OS will actually run on my pc ? Or are there an alternatives that I don't know about ?

[@christopheriman4921]

Most linux distros have a live cd installer where you can try out the OS before install and that would probably be a better indicator of performance than a VM anyway

[@MichaelNROH]

@christopheriman4921True, but performance might not be optimal. Especially when you want to try recent gaming related stuff that want an SSD. I would suggest a whole external harddrive with USB 4 or 3.2, so that you get at least some performance for dynamic loading.

[@the_real_isco2146]

@@MichaelNROH @christopheriman4921 Thanks you for your replies guys I guess I will try out those things and see how that turn out

[@rishipopat6708]

Honestly Linux has come a very long way in gaming and meeting the needs of the average user. I yearn for the day i can use adobe apps in my fedora install and get rid of Microsoft's ad machine once and for all

[@tedzards509]

Sadly Adobe thinks that Linux users have the wrong mindset for their products.

[@sorceresssgarden2172]

Single GPU passtrough on proxmox is quite easy, in the VM settings just set display to Standard VGA (std) and pass trough the gpu. Setup: AMD 5900X, MSI B550 Pro (the newer one has a proper iommu group on the first PCIe), MSI RTX 3050

[@MichaelNROH]

From a technical side it is yeah. Sometimes you have to isolate the GPU or unload the drivers but I don't think that's even necessary most of the times. IOMMU kinda sucks on a second or third PCIe slots though. At least the native detection

[@RealJonzuk]

can you add me on signal and help me with the gpu passthrough im on nixos using RX 6800 my signal i can comment again if you can help me i like gpu passthrough since i never want to run windows on my pc i dont trust microsoft to not fry my hardware

[@sorceresssgarden2172]

@@MichaelNROH Havent had any issues yet but i also avoid games with anticheat for the reasons mentionted in the video. Whole idea was inspired by your videos btw :)

[@denji-0]

Hi, first off your videos have been very informative to me, being a complete newbie in this whole penguin space and all.But i have a question i was hoping for some assistance in despite it being totally out of scope of this video..I was looking into what gpu i should get for my gaming/work rig and my options are between a 3080 Founders E or the RX 6800 XT paired with a Ryzen 7 3700x..(Not sure if its necessary to state but i will also be using hyperland as my wm) Given the whole wayland / x debacle, in your opinion what would be a better choice performance wise for native linux gaming, virtualization and cyber security focused tasks..

[@MichaelNROH]

The CPU is probably gonna be a tiny bottleneck for both GPUs, but generally speaking, it just depends on your budget and workload. If you do a lot of work with programs that use hardware acceleration, then Nvidia is the way to go. If you want a better price to performance ratio and don't care about raytracing, then AMD is better. It's a payoff between what you need it for

[@denji-0]

@@MichaelNROH Thank You for the heads up on the CPU(would a 7 5800x be better?) and for even answering my question..6800 xt it is..Once again i appreciate your content and "i will be bak🤖"

[@uxiii9537]

@@denji-0 I recommend you look at benchmarks for your usecases for the following cpus Amd 5700x Amd 5800x Amd 5700x3d Amd5800x3d The x3d versions of cpus have a generally higher ammount of L3 cache which makes them perform better in gaming. I dont know how well do they hold up in linux though. If you can afford it i would recommend the x3d versions. Once again LOOK AT BENCHMARS for YOUR USECASES. I think thats all

[@malkogindrat]

Thanks for discussing this topic. Passthrough a graphic card for me is like inception. Good for PCI, HD and USB. I'm too picky on performance for gaming. A real nerd has every system possible. The best solution I have at the moment is dual boot win/arch on my main pc (gaming/excel/photoshop with windows, the rest coding/tweaking with linux), the others laptops, surfaces, nuc, servers, pi each have their own OS depending on the application needed. No need to be stubborn on one system.

[@FengLengshun]

IMHO just use Steam/Heroic/Bottles/Lutris/Wine for most stuff, then use VM when not needing performance, but if you absolutely need GPU or compatibility then dual-boot

[@Prophet6000]

This was a good video. The only thing I have to use Windows for is my capture card.

[@MichaelNROH]

Oh boy that's a bummer. I also had this issue with the Cam Link Pro. Got rid of it asap

[@ralph4370]

You can get away with OBS and USB HDMI capture device works for me.

[@fabricio4794]

Did you Installed AMD GPU pró Driver? Arch linix has this driver...

[@rayjaymor8754]

I use my desktop rig for gaming and it runs Windows. My laptop is for everything else and it's running Linux.

[@grizzlyindustries7593]

I think one of the greatest investments for people not essentially wanting to "test" a VM of Windows. But "needing" a Windows OS to run certain programs and not to "test" a Window's VM. Then I really would invest in another SSD and storage drives dedicated for there Windows NTFS partition as boot and the rest of there Window's partitions being exFAT cause exFAT can work with most of Android OSs as well. It is just an easier way to run these. I don't even run dual boot on one drive anymore. I just used another drive for my seperate OSs. I did this on a Thinkpad T470 before I gave it to my brother who uses it. And even now, I just use one desktop unit for Linux. And one desktop unit for Windows. Seperate drive. Seperate units. Seperate functions. Two awesome tools I use. I agree with you, Michael Horn. Like these videos on these topics. Funny enough. Learned from my teacher years ago. "VMs are fun to test with. Not fun to use when necessary." This was when asked by a student who just asked why we don't always just use a VM. Smart guy. Worked with ONI and used to live in subsmarines as the main tech guy. Wasn't in the navy, so I have no idea his rank or specific OS. But he is still well respected and liked by everyone. So, I definitely know he did better than me.

[@tedzards509]

I dont play any games with anticheats so I could do all my gaming on Linux. However VR has a 100 or so ms delay on Linux. So far Ive tried Manjaro, Fedora and Nobara, both with an nvidia 1060 and an amd 6800 but the issue just persists. When playing VR games through proton things get even more weird as there are two different delays for the native SteamVR stuff and the proton game.

[@asunavk69]

Yeah this is a video addressing anti-cheat problems, i do play some online games with anti-cheat like genshin, and other example cs2, but i am part of the audience that does not care about gpu-passthrough for games but for work, therefore i'd wish we had access to SR-IOV on AMD and NVIDIA for that, in my case i require some gpu functionality not all, and unfornatly the solutions on vbox and vmware not that great too.. But cool tech nontheless i just enjoy doing these configs and exploring about libvirt, qemu, etc, its imo one of if not the most impressive piece of software on linux imo.

[@pazzoeo]

In my experience it's just way easier and less time consuming to dualboot. You restart your computer in windows and play, then go back to linux

[@davidchuyma9783]

when I followed ur lynx tutorial nothing changed when I did the final step for installing it and I'm not in a loop

[@josegarita2718]

I used to use single GPU pass-through to play a couple of games in windows, Valorant and Halo Infinite, Halo Infinite started working fine on linux and then Vanguard started requiring more and more tinkering to work I had to rebuild the VM every week with different parameters, different modifications to Windows, until 2 and 1/5 years ago I just stopped caring about it and deleted the Windows VM, it's not worth your time. And no, I don't like dual boot, so no more windows in my life.

[@SpookySkeletonGang]

Ok I just have to say, you mention that cheat makers can utilize the Windows kernel just like Linux so it's not a concern, but these are not the same situations? You can modify the Linux kernel as much as you want and custom kernels are quite common, whereas the Windows kernel is entirely closed source. It's one of the very few advantages Windows has over linux, developers can guarantee integrity for at least that part of the system, which they can't easily do on Linux.

[@donoteatmikezila]

I've given up on dual-boot and vfio. It's just a headache and isn't worth it. I now just have a gaming PC running windows that I play games natively on, and a cheap thinkcentre PC that I use as my main desktop with Linux on it. All of the hardware is intel and well-supported and there's no drama at all. I use sunshine+moonlight to stream games to my main desktop, and my gaming PC more or less acts like a game server. I get native, fully-supported gaming, a linux-only computer to use for everything else, and there's zero bodges involved.

[@MichaelNROH]

I thought of doing the same with Sunlight for a while, but decided to use better use a second PC as a powerful homeserver instead. Especially since more and more games start blocking virtual outputs or inputs like a remote keyboard

[@donoteatmikezila]

@@MichaelNROH I haven't had any games refuse to work over sunshine+moonlight, I'm not surprised that it's starting. I don't play many games that have intense anti-cheat though.

[@EricParker]

It's extremely useful for software, IE running video editors that wont run under Linux. Gaming can be annoying because of anticheats, a side benefit is that some malware will refuse to run under a VM. Not entirely sure (I think it involves secure boot) how Vanguard does it, but in theory if you have Hyper-V on the VM, it's impossible to 100% detect a VM because Hyper-V enabled on bare metal Windows is also a VM (but is whitelisted). Some anticheats rely on other tells.

[@MichaelNROH]

As far as I'm aware, many games simply refuse to launch when Hyper-V is even enabled. Valorant does it in fact

[@davidchuyma9783]

An can't get the option to install the Linux thing after I put the USB stick as the first boot option

[@pacifico4999]

I agree completely. I settled for dual boot

[@ArefinKarim]

Make Linux myth busted video please

[@MichaelNROH]

Mh, that might not be a bad idea

[@TheAtariSan]

Well, yes, the reason mentioned for the central server are right... but the biggest reason nowadays' microtransaction. Also, since gamespy shutdown 12 years ago, it was the reason they moved to private server since COD P2P server suck on xbox 360 if the game host disconnected.

[@alexgghlebg5375]

On the one hand, I think that GPU Passthrough can be used for gaming, although it depends on the game. On the other hand, GPU Passthrough is "easy" once you understand how it works in detail. Here's a tutorial to set up an efficient GPU Passthrough: To set up GPU Passthrough with Nvidia or AMD, you need to disable the Nvidia driver on the GPU and enable VFIO-PCI (or something similarly named). This way, no driver from AMD or Nvidia can interfere with your GPU. It also means that you can't use this GPU for gaming or video output. In my case, my setup is quite powerful. However, if you try this with low RAM quality and quantity, or a slow CPU, I don't recommend it at all. A lot of workarounds are required to achieve this. Here are my specifications: - Ryzen 5 5500 - 32 GB RAM - 2.5 TB disk total (one disk is for Windows 10) - GTX 1650 (my video output) - AMD RX 6600 (my GPU that I assign to my VM) - A motherboard with an IOMMU group that I specifically chose when I was buying it(I forgot the fullname) If you want to get better latency for the display than what KVM gives by default, use Looking Glass. Note that having 2 GPUs makes the process much easier, and ensure that IOMMU is usable to implement GPU Passthrough.

[@mrkostya008]

7:56 damn you are an og

[@MichaelNROH]

The only reason why I still wanna finish it

[@F_Around_and_find_out]

Best anti cheat is probably 100% hosting the game, or server side game, cloud gaming, whatever sticks. Except for the kernel itself, nothing resides at ring 0.

[@MichaelNROH]

Maybe but it wouldn't work well for the games since they loose everything competitive about them

[@Korodarn]

Yeah honestly it's easier to just get a USB SSD, install windows 'to go" and drop all the games that you can't play in linux onto it.

[@Totallynotmwa]

Or dualboot windows with tweaks

[@gerarderloper]

Yeah I have a VM 4090 with passthrough atm but I am waiting the day Wayland gets better and HDR+DLSS comes to linux (ALL OF IT, not fragmented broken parts)

[@A4orce84]

So....I should dual-boot with Windows still? =)

[@SrPivete13]

Talk about Nobara linux as a Out-of-box distro for gamers and easy suport as based on Fedora please....

[@fanshaw]

Don't give money to companies that hate you. Don't compromise your host security for a game unless you really know what you're doing with segmented networking and ephemeral OS instances and segregated application access.

[@blacksundarkskies]

you can do gpu pass-through with a single gpu tho is difficult

[@whiskytangofoxtrot_]

I think the one thing that makes me mad is the games that refuse to work unless you own them on steam (I personally dont mind repurchasing on steam its just a hassle something) An example is for honor. Have it on ubisoft, wont allow anticheat to work Buy on steam, 3 clicks later in a ranked game. Its annoying but im just glad it still works

[@MichaelNROH]

Games that have Anti Cheat enabled on Linux, should run from any launcher tbh. The main reason is that the binaries are the same. From my experience it doesn't make a difference. Which game are we talking about here?

[@whiskytangofoxtrot_]

@@MichaelNROH for honor. For some reason on my fedora 40 install I couldn't get the anti cheat to initiate via bottles or lutris. Via steam was press play and call it a day

[@uxiii9537]

I really wanted to play wuthering waves on my linuz machine via lutris. Tried installing it only to be disappointed after looking up that the game with no competetice elements whatsoever requires a kernel level anti cheat. I mean even if i were to modify the memory of the game most of the things should be eaisly noticed by the server. The only things i could possibly do are modifying movement speeds and other stuff.

[@JellyOsaurus]

actually, gpu passthrough is worth it for me, because in the rare instance, its for virtual reality as those games dont really use anti cheat and vr on linux is terrible

[@elalemanpaisa]

Why would any one bother to get through the pain of gpu pass through and just not install windows on a different drive soley for gaming. End of story the restart into windows is as quidk as starting a vm.. and performane hit with virrual drives or overhead is always something you dont want in gaming there is no reason for vms for gaming on Linux (only on mac because apple is the devil) Btw if you use kvm on top of a linux os you dont have a type one anymore

[@MichaelNROH]

KVM and the Linux Distro share the same kernel, so it's technically a type 1 hypervisor. It's most comparable to Hyper-V, but with a more interesting architecture.

[@elalemanpaisa]

@@MichaelNROH yes and no however proxmox adds an additional layer where I would argue it's not type one anymore. Technically it is the same like installing windows 11 Pro desktop and using hyper-v it is also interacting with kernel level virtualization. Proxmox is debian with extra packages. In fact it not only installs stock Debian first even proxmox recommends installing Debian normal and adding the repos to add the GUI if you need a custom disk layout or encryption.

[@JessicaFEREM]

yea you're better off just dualbooting or buying a windows computer because all the games that won't run on linux, won't run on a GPU pass-through either.

[@MichaelNROH]

Basically, yeah

[@GRAYgauss]

As someone who has been running my windows VM with passthrough for gaming for the last year...you underestimate the utility and convenience, also the performance. I get better performance out of passthrough and pinned cpus than native windows. Also just great to use one workstation as two separate machines, not having to ever reboot your hypervisor. I'm at like 288 days. Anti cheat is meaningless to me though. Also shutoff your windows VM to reuse your GPU for other containers or whatever simply.

[@NielsGx]

Framepacing and latency must be bad too

[@MichaelNROH]

When the CPU is the bottleneck then yes. Otherwise the framepacing is not really worse, since the architecture doesn't really change much with Type 1 Hypervisors

[@andreasplosky8516]

I never ever do multiplayer. I should have the option to refuse the anticheat garbage.

[@SB-qm5wg]

I swear, the devs create new launchers after a decade of no updates just to break Proton.

[@MichaelNROH]

Meh, the launchers are just there to either gather user data, place ads in overlays and games (personalized) and to push people to their own plattform if two launchers become too annoying. That was way better before, whereas you just had one launcher and you were good to go.

[@MrGamelover23]

1:56 No, this did not happen with Genshin Impact. It happened with their driver being signed into malware, but nobody who had Genshin Impact installed was actually at risk.

[@MichaelNROH]

That's not true. The Anti Cheat driver was signed, ergo can use that "certification" to change system settings as it is "allowed to". With a right signed driver, you can interact with software that trusts it, which is why it was dangerous. The problem was that the Anti Cheat could execute system functions and yes, it was being used without having the game installed, but if you have access to this module on a system in one way or another, then it is an exploit. If I install Vanguard on a system, either with Valorant or as a standalone, then it shouldn't have access to everything, which is the point.

[@MrGamelover23]

@@MichaelNROH Let me know when someone gets their system compromised just because they installed the game rather than installing malware. Only then will people actually listen to the gospel of why kernel level anticheat is bad. Nobody cares until you can actually get compromised just because you installed the game. Weirdly enough, Genshin Impact's anti-cheat no longer seems to flag Linux, which is weird because they never gave any official word on that. They just silently added Linux support without telling anyone.

[@aaronplays_]

With Nvidia working on a GeForce Now app for Steam Deck, we can safely say that Linux is definitely catching mainstream attention, slow but steady.

[@jamesrodriguez8899]

Might get hate for this but single GPU passthrough is a fool's errand, as it's no different than dual booting except its more prone to breaking more and just complicates things. I have a dual GPU set up as I like to use my desktop linux and windows at the same time, but even then I've been booting into my windows drive bare metal more often recently.

[@MichaelNROH]

The biggest advantage to Virtualization is, that you can use Linux and Windows at the same time. It's like running a Browser or something like Discord on Linux, while Gaming on Windows on the same machine. That's something that Dual Boot cannot do unfortunately, so you have to install programs twice.

[@somone799]

Someordianarygamer managed to run valo by doing nested vm and 2 lines to virt manager xml file or smth like that.

[@nikichashadow]

i remember wen you started using linux and now his entire chanel is about linux

[@MichaelNROH]

It's fun

[@pieru]

windows eats grub if you dualboot

[@xard64]

It goes without saying that running Windows alone is not enough and the VM approach has been already plugged out for quite some time. Native Windows 10 might not be enough for long as the support runs out and consoles have been starting to ban custom controllers lately. If this trend continues you might not only need the correct hardware to run latest supported operating system but also you'd need to use only "trusted" input devices (and maybe output devices as well if the monitor makers start getting funny ideas with AI). I personally think that the "secure" client model for multiplayer on PC is a dead concept as consoles do all that much cheaper already and are still not completely cheater proof.

[@MichaelNROH]

I think that we will see a shift in gaming pretty soon. If the cheating situation isn't improved, less people are gonna stick to the games in the long run and companies need to find a new way to make them profitable. Some think that PC gaming is going die out because of cheating, but in reality, the efforts would just shift to consoles

[@xard64]

@@MichaelNROH In the late 90's cheating was technically laughable easy but never that much of a practical problem due to games allowing self hosting and communities looking after themselves. PC gaming has always been bit like Linux in a sense that let community do it's own support and things will be mostly fine. The only problem is that companies and their monetization strategies are in odds with the natural state of the PC environment.

[@insu_na]

I'm passing 2x Nvidia P40s through on my EPYC Server for AI inference. I *could* use vGPU, but why? 😂 As it is I now have 48GB of VRAM, which is plenty... Tho given that I actually do already have vGPU licenses (what an awful, awful product to buy as a non-business entity) I might try to use a P40 for remote gaming, too, at some point. The machine can definitely handle it, after all 😂

[@ScottTempler]

I don't play online games because I suck against humans, so Anti-Cheat isn't an issue for me. Though Star Citizen uses Easy Anti-Cheat and works from Lutris (Probably because it's alpha). We'll see how it is after release.

[@MrGamelover23]

Actually, the reason why games moved away from hosting your own servers is probably because they saw how much money people were making off of esports competitions, and they wanted that money.

[@GamerEnLinux]

Linux + AMD GPU for the moment is the best option for your $$ Wallet , because the performance of the Nvidia Drivers Sucks ( for the moment ).

[@AbdullahALSHRIQI]

صدق شي عجيب يريحك من تحميل وبندوز على الجهاز الحقيقي

[@TheRobot_140]

I tried this for so long before realising that this was very impractical. Having this video before would have been a life saver.

[@ZepAnimations]

man i love valve

[@leerobinson8709]

I know im in the minority but there is simply no game that earns the right for me to install windows to play. This is the line in the sand for me.

[@Metrox524]

Then maybe i keep my 1070ti when i get a new gpu lol

[@mechan1sm_]

kernel anticheats are rootkits, if one knows what does it mean, he/she will never play such games

[@cameronbosch1213]

I agree with this 100%. Not to mention one of them is owned by a Chinese company!

[@niezzayt3809]

03:27 Listen what you said here but slowly Linux community is so great!! They managed to make any Windows games run on Linux without even the game developer or Microsoft involved So why not just use the big brain of Linux community to make the anticheats running on Linux without any of those party involved? ARE THEY LAZY?????????

[@deano1699]

Basically, the games with anti-cheat are filled with cheaters. So, if you're a hardcore gamer who doesn't cheat... You should just abandon the incompatible cheater-games anyway. There are TONS of fun games out there that sidestep the issue entirely, and there are WAY better ways to eliminate cheating than hardware monitoring. Also, the fear factor of a ban in most of these games is losing purchased DLC/skins/mtx currency? Again, those are also great signs of a game worth skipping anyway. I tried really hard to pay attention all the way through... But were there any other points besides potentially getting banned? It doesn't seem like there are many downsides to going with a VFIO or VM setup these days.

[@AlucardNoir]

Destiny 2 - because Warframe is too good for you!

[@MichaelNROH]

Warframe is not even close to Destiny's gameplay. It's its own game, neither better or worse. Just different.

[@AlucardNoir]

@@MichaelNROH Oh ye of few frames.

[@CjqNslXUcM]

I just stopped playing games. simple as.

[@dableutyef]

I think you're a bit overly concerned about what "normal people" would have to deal with here. Normal people just run windows.

[@fabricio4794]

Today s Games are so Boredom that i do Preffer Console Emulation and i dont care about Steam Games..on a medium of 85 games 5 are windows games...so i dont care...

[@Flackon]

Not a convincing argument. To begin with, a "serious gamer" wouldn't be playing games like Valorant in the first place, but regardless of that, Gaming on a VM just opens up a lot of compatibility access that you wouldn't have otherwise. Not just for games, but for a lot of Windows apps. There's really no point in not doing it if you have the hardware and want Windows access occasionally. Performance overhead is negligible and in some cases can be better. Plus you get sandboxing which you wouldn't with bare metal Windows and still having a GNU/Linux system underlying it all for everything else.

[@P3d3r0s0]

This video title is pretty misleading for someone that doesn't play online games. It should have been shorter and if there is a performance cost to single player games using passthrough it would have been great to have a general idea of what that is. From what i understood, gpu passthrough is possible even in a single gpu computer and it might not have a noticeable impact on performance if you don't care or have anything with anti cheat.

[@oinodin]

i may be unpopular but ... GPU Passthrough is future and only way how to play games ...

[@alexcerzea]

Nearly destroying your damn system for it? Xd

[@EliPorterMahn]

Linux Systems should never be used for gaming

[@BernardoHenriquez]

If i cant play a game on linux, i just don't play it ..... that's it, i do something else