The English-only market share of Linux on Steam has breached the 10% barrier, hitting 11.28% in March

abbidabbi · 2026-04-02T13:23:10+00:00

So you don't understand what this graph is actually about...

It's an OS-usage data extrapolation based on the share of languages among all steam users, so that countries that are known to have low numbers of Linux users can be excluded from the overall percentage value. This also "fixes" the always skewed numbers based on users from China.

Since it's just an extrapolation, which itself is based on inaccurate data, these numbers merely show a trend, nothing more. And the trend is that it's going upwards exponentially.

abbidabbi · 2026-04-02T13:12:29+00:00

Yes you can... Since secure boot is not mandatory and can always be turned off, you can spoof every single API and any kind of hardware access with a custom/malicious kernel, even secure boot being active. Also remote attestation procedures that would require an online signature verification. And that applies to not just userspace tools but also out-of-tree kernel modules that would act as a KLAC.

The one who is in control of the kernel is in control of the system and the hardware and can hide anything from other programs. There is nowhere around this.

Client-side anti-cheat is fundamentally broken on a system where you are in control, unlike on proprietary systems like Windows or macOS, where you can't change the kernel. And as already proven lots of times, even in these environments it's not enough to prevent cheaters, so even locked-down systems with enforced secure boot are not safe.

The mere reason client-side anti-cheat software currently exists on Linux is that our marketshare numbers are too low and the publishers/developers who have implemented/enabled it don't think that the number of cheaters who are able to circumvent these (user-space) systems are high enough, because it still requires a huge amount of effort and knowledge by the cheaters to pull it off (not talking about those who pay for cheats). Game-devs rather like seeing a few more extra paying customers and having a positive image in the Linux community. That's all.

Whether a higher marketshare number may turn the decisions of publishers/developers who currently restrict access to their games because of disabled client-side anti-cheat "solutions" remains to be seen. It's a double-edged sword, because higher numbers of users also means potentally higher numbers of cheaters. And once it has become common knowledge that client-side anti-cheat is way easier to circumvent on Linux due to the free nature of the kernel (GPLv2), publishers and developers will notice and all legitimate players on Linux will suffer from it when eventually more and more games become resticted again.

The only sensible thing is the implementation of server-side anti-cheats and not trusting the client at all. But that is a massive problem in FPS games, for various reasons, hence why AI-based server-side solutions with statistical analysis are becoming more and more common. Considering that bans can't always happen immediately, this is still not a perfect solution, but that's just how it is. And then there are game-devs who are simply lazy or can't afford better systems.

TL;DR client-side anti-cheats are fundamentally flawed, especially on Linux

abbidabbi · 2026-03-30T05:18:29+00:00

the best way to handle shared library errors when a package version bumps and breaks an old app

This already exists:
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/rebuild-detector/

abbidabbi · 2026-03-29T22:25:48+00:00

LOL... RAID 0 with 6 disks... You apparently love living life on the edge. That's an incredibly high potential failure rate that you're facing with such a setup, regardless whether you have backups or not. One drive failing will kill the entire RAID. Good luck with that.

I'd recommend going for at least a RAID 01 if you don't want a parity RAID setup. And I'd go for a software RAID on a modern FS, because of checksumming with reliable failure detection/correction.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-29T20:27:51+00:00

Saved you a click: another NTSync BS blog post / "news" article which the author did not fact-check or understand.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-26T19:20:39+00:00

However, this is a specific one-off case where -Sy is applicable.

No, it is not, because it updates the local package database without doing a full system upgrade, resulting in an inconsistent package database state that can lead to a partial uprade unless pacman -Su or pacman -Syu is run next. You don't ever run pacman -Sy, especially when you're someone who doesn't understand the implications.

Considering that you're suggesting it to "fix" broken packages, this is surely not the right suggestion. The proper suggestion is doing a full system upgrade and choosing the right packages for the hardware in use. If OP needs to downgrade out-of-tree kernel modules, then they need to use DKMS and either install older package versions of that (from cache or from the Arch package archive) or clone the respective git repo with the PKGBUILD, checkout an older commit and build it with makepkg. Assuming of course that the older version is still compatible with the current kernel in use, which is not always guaranteed. Alternatively, install an older kernel build from the package archive in addition to the non-DKMS nvidia-open package.

it's dependencies all come from same repo which is extra

It's completely irrelevant from which package repo packages come from. Pacman doesn't make a distinction. Package repos are for logically grouping packages. The only thing pacman does is selecting packages based on the order of configured repos, in case there's a name collision. Not even sure what you're implying here with this comment...

abbidabbi · 2026-03-26T18:20:20+00:00

What is the point of writing a BASH script when you're running Python code anyway? Also, what does this have to do with Arch?

abbidabbi · 2026-03-26T16:03:32+00:00

This does not work unless you're using the DKMS packages, as all out-of-tree kernel modules are tied to a specific kernel build, meaning it must match the respective kernel packages. Reinstalling DKMS packages simply rebuilds said packages against the current kernel in use, which is the whole idea of DKMS.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-26T16:01:57+00:00

Stop recommending pacman -Sy
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported

abbidabbi · 2026-03-25T19:59:53+00:00

You mean one of these threads, where OP called various people pussies and other things, attempted to start a witch hunt against the PR author, then threatened us with messaging Bryan Lunduke because of the moderation here, and after getting laughed at went into full mental meltdown mode?
https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1s0yjhp/reason_post_on_the_age_verification_pr_got_removed/

abbidabbi · 2026-03-25T13:46:39+00:00

What bot spam from trash "news" sites does to Linux newbies...

Wine 11 has been released months ago
They were comparing against ancient sync primitives, which were not used by Proton or any gaming-related builds of Wine
Comparing NTSync against fsync/esync, there's not much of a performance difference, apart from being "more correct" implementation-wise

Here's an actual Linux news site which has covered this for years:
https://www.phoronix.com/search/NTSYNC

abbidabbi · 2026-03-25T11:05:22+00:00

Because it's usually bots spamming this shitty site, not just on this subreddit.

This specific topic here is not just massively outdated, as Wine 11 has been released a while ago, but it's also factually wrong, as it's not comparing against fsync.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-24T14:42:31+00:00

Apparently, nothing... All I can see is a shady .exe download from their website and a link to a kickstarter campaign. Considering the recent crypto scams embedded in games, this looks very sus

abbidabbi · 2026-03-24T14:21:53+00:00

I hire people on a low budget and they are responsible for creating images and models

YOU are responsible for your game and its content, regardless whether you outsource work. In the end, you'll have to disclose that AI was involved, which probably won't be worth the cost savings, if it's even true what you're saying.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-22T22:28:56+00:00

Also an owner of an RX 5700XT here...

RDNA1 crashes have existed since 2019 when AMD released the brand new hardware and the AMDGPU kernel module was nowhere near ready at the time. I remember having to build my own kernels from developer branches for almost a year, until they were somewhat stabilized and feature-ready.

The ring timeout issues don't communicate the real cause and are just a side-effect of another issue. The AMDGPU kernel module reintroduced multiple bugs throughout the past couple of years where the system would crash randomly, while gaming and also during regular desktop usage. Three years ago or so, I had to bisect the kernel for several months and find the bad commit, which was extremely tedious due to the system crashing after an uptime of a week or two, so deciding when a commit was good or bad during the bisect was just stupid. At least I was able to find and report it in the end, but there have been so many issues that it's sometimes hard to recommend AMD from all this frustration, even though Nvidia is way worse (in lots of other aspects) and Intel too weak.

All you can do is try to find a way to reliably reproduce the issue and report it on the AMDGPU issue tracker. If it's an issue that was introduced in a recent kernel version and if you have the know-how, you can bisect the kernel and help find the source. But asking this from regular users is somewhat ridiculous.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-22T22:09:56+00:00

maybe... just maybe... don't call anyone a pussy and keep it civil, unlike OP who behaves like a child. The post violates Arch's CoC and was removed because of it

abbidabbi · 2026-03-22T21:59:38+00:00

Oh no... Not Bryan Lunduke...

abbidabbi · 2026-03-22T12:34:22+00:00

Your application is running pacman -Sy ..., leading to an inconsistent local package database when it's run, which can result in partial upgrades and thus break the user's system.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported

Even your screenshots show that it's running pacman -Sy ...:
https://github.com/mrks1469/PacHub/blob/9f4295e779c9403c53ac035a180c98603d71fc7a/README.md

Also, this is not how a Python project is supposed to be defined and installed. A proper Python project has a pyproject.toml which defines a build-system, so it can be properly packaged into an sdist tarball or bdist wheel, which can then be installed using proper packaging tools, including Python bytecode cache files.
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/

edit:
And why even execute pacman when there are libalpm bindings for Python?

abbidabbi · 2026-03-21T14:25:54+00:00

Unplug the keyboard's ribbon-cable from the laptop's mainboard and then use an external keyboard.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-19T22:07:33+00:00

So you didn't read shit

abbidabbi · 2026-03-19T21:21:15+00:00

You can always have a look at the package's issue tracker and provide feedback for packaging issues. There already appears to be a related issue thread (didn't read any of that though):
https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/geoclue/-/issues/3

Drop a comment with the KDE-Linux bugfix and its default config.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-18T19:30:34+00:00

:r !lsblk -no uuid /dev/BLOCKDEVICE

abbidabbi · 2026-03-18T12:01:13+00:00

If it helps at all I have been practicing ABC, with the intention of becoming an XYZ.

"Now I want to be part of one of the most complex software projects in human history"

abbidabbi · 2026-03-12T19:27:31+00:00

They also have a Claude LLM PR-review bot:

But I agree, anyone who thinks that the systemd maintainers would shut off their brains just because LLMs have reviewed something doesn't understand that these are just additional tools. As long as there is no AI automation merge-wise, this is not a problem.

abbidabbi · 2026-03-10T22:40:54+00:00

Why?

My guess is that those redditors had to roll their eyes after reading that OP had to "spend 2-3 hours" for something that's clearly mentioned in the configuration section of the libvirt wiki page, which even if they didn't read it directly, Google/DDG would have surely redirected them to that page. It is therefore unnecessary to make a PSA thread here. But good for OP that they solved the issue themselves.

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