I played all 3 several years ago along with a few mods (unoffical patch, some QOL, added missing quests, minor stuff). Ran practically perfectly through Lutris (from GOG).

The original was, by far, my favorite, being more open world, although, I did think they got better and better throughout the series.

I'm super excited for #2! I hope it runs well! I'd consider buying it a little after release (I wanna make sure it's good on Linux first)

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

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Quoting: redneckdrowMass Effect Legendary Edition

Picked it up as well. I never played the series and have managed to exist this long knowing nothing about the plot. I'm intending to stream/dock it from the Deck onto the TV and play with my partner in the evenings starting next year (I hope)

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Quoting: junibegoodI played 52 different games and my most played this year is Slay the Spire.

My most notable achievement is having played 0 game released in 2023. Why the hell am I reading a blog about gaming news ? :tongue:

Lol!! I did that last year (and maybe a year before?) Bought no games. I splurged a bit this year with 1 "new release" (System shock). It was worth it!

But yeah, I have so many games, I don't really need to buy more, either!!

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It said 12 games for me, but when I looked at the list, it was really more like 6, lol. The rest were mostly me making sure the system worked or maybe staring at the menu wondering if it was really worth it, lol.

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I'm kinda curious about horizon zero dawn. Might have to check that out!

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Quoting: fabertaweExcellent review :happy: I really should use mine more!

Took the words out of my mouth! That was a great read!!

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Quoting: BlackBloodRum

Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: Nateman1000

Quoting: BlackBloodRum

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: BlackBloodRumWhy is the game blurred? This developer should put their hands up and admit they failed basic computer security.

You mean . . . they're running Windows?!

That could well be true! Imagine having to use Windows every day though? The agony, the anger, the frustration, the distractions and to top it all off, you upload an infected game. :unsure:

Many think windows disease is incurable but it is very curable. So make sure to get a Linux or BSD distribution for your computer and cure this disease

This is probably ignorance in my part, but how is security better with Linux in this situation? We're (mostly) running these programs wide open out of the home drive (maybe some ppl are using flatpack or snap, but even then that's not a default requirement on most distro and people still poke holes in those sandboxes regularly). No, it can't infect "the system", but since we're executing programs out of /home, isn't that good enough? The malware is still running under the users permissions, it can still execute in /home, read data, access the network, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something fundamental with Linux security, but it seems once I log in anything within the user space can run under my permissions, malware or not? Especially if it's malware hidden in a program/game that I intentionally started?

I've used Linux a very long time, but I'm self taught.... Security is one of those Linux areas that's always been complex for me to grasp in a meaningful way.

For a typical desktop system without additional protection whatsoever, the malware may work. But consider this, what is malware trying to do, and where is it looking?

It's almost certain it'll look for typical Windows locations, which would be those provided by Proton (Wine). In the case of a Steam game running via proton for example, that means if it will find steamapps/compatdata/(gameid)/pfx/drive_c/* by default. The good news is, unlike regular wine, proton doesn't link users/steamuser/Documents to your real documents location.

So it's possible the malware will simply do nothing of harm to a Linux machine.

However, that doesn't mean you can simply forget and dismiss it! It is possible the malware has been trained to handle Linux, in which case it will try to get access to your home directory. Worst case here is your home directory gets hosed, and data which your user has permission to modify is altered, which is fairly minor.

You can prevent this situation in a couple of ways, you could prevent that access to those files using AppArmor or SELinux, you could combine that with, or use only flatpak with a proper configuration by modifying the permissions to revoke "All User/System/anything Files". It simply doesn't need it, along with disabling access to xdg-music, xdg-pictures. Steam only needs to access the locations that it is instructed to download games to (Your library), so you can specify only that directory as read/write and block everything else. It shouldn't need other directories, but if it does and doesn't need to write to them, then set it to read-only.

This advice applies to basically all flatpak apps. Only give minimal permissions. For example with Bottles, you might download your GOG games to a home directory folder like ~/Games, well bottles doesn't need to write to those GOG installers. So it can be safely set to read-only for bottles.

Oh, and the big one: Keep things updated with the latest security patches.

These are simple security measures, but it should be more than enough to prevent windows-based malware from escaping its wine prefix.

It might not however, stop a specifically targeted to you attack. A key thing to remember, security isn't something you can just say "must be like this" for. Different environments have different threat models.

Know your threat model, and adjust your security as necessary.

Thanks for the info. Might I tee you up another question(s)? Hope is not too silly. For the nearly 2 decades I've toyes with Linux the mantra has always been "ppl won't target Linux because it's too small so malware won't work!

Now, I truly mean no offense, but the beginning of your post reminds me of that. Why would it just look for Windows directory? Why not just go up a level or two or simply run from the directory it's currently in?

For the sake of argument here, let's presume a Linux build of a Steam game was infected... Why would we presume it would look for Windows stuff? It's already running attached to a Linux script or executable in Linux environment, right?

I see your point about Proton and Wine making things more difficult, but I do have a question about that. I know they still seem to keep Z: as the rest of the file system outside the prefix. Why would a Windows malware not look for other drives? You're right, it depends on what it's trying to do, but I can say my limited workplace experience is all in Microsoft shops and they all use network drives heavily. I'd expect a ransomware or something similar to look for stuff outside C: right away, right?

Last last question.... Even with everything sandboxed, a malware (say some sort of DDos bot), could just sit in the sandbox and do it's thing? We'd still need an antivirus or someway to detect it being there, right?

Thanks for answering my questions and having the patience to deal with stupid questions!!

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Interesting article!
It makes sense to support Linux. The maturity and adoption of Linux is large enough that any investment into it gets you more back than you put in. It makes good economic sense. Just look at all the other companies that have done the same thing (IBM, Intel, AMD, Valve, etc).

I do hope more adoption and migration continues. It would be nice to see more user programs make thier way over (looking at you, office)

Quoting: g000h- Pushing customers towards subscription software agreements, rather than permanent licenses.

I really don't like subscriptions, I think they are silly.... But I don't think it's fair to claim that's an "evil" that belongs just to Microsoft when that's literally the business model for almost every Linux OS company (support subscriptions).

Even then, of the subscriptions, I do like IBM's/Red Hat's version "you can still use the software if you cancel, you just can't upgrade it". I think you are also prohibited from connecting to cloud services in IBM's case as well, but I'm a little fuzzy there.

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Quoting: Nateman1000

Quoting: BlackBloodRum

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: BlackBloodRumWhy is the game blurred? This developer should put their hands up and admit they failed basic computer security.

You mean . . . they're running Windows?!

That could well be true! Imagine having to use Windows every day though? The agony, the anger, the frustration, the distractions and to top it all off, you upload an infected game. :unsure:

Many think windows disease is incurable but it is very curable. So make sure to get a Linux or BSD distribution for your computer and cure this disease

This is probably ignorance in my part, but how is security better with Linux in this situation? We're (mostly) running these programs wide open out of the home drive (maybe some ppl are using flatpack or snap, but even then that's not a default requirement on most distro and people still poke holes in those sandboxes regularly). No, it can't infect "the system", but since we're executing programs out of /home, isn't that good enough? The malware is still running under the users permissions, it can still execute in /home, read data, access the network, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something fundamental with Linux security, but it seems once I log in anything within the user space can run under my permissions, malware or not? Especially if it's malware hidden in a program/game that I intentionally started?

I've used Linux a very long time, but I'm self taught.... Security is one of those Linux areas that's always been complex for me to grasp in a meaningful way.

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