[Zak]

I think the most stringent types of Windows anti-cheat rely on remote attestation of the operating system. It's theoretically possible to design a Linux-based OS that supports such a capability, but the sort of people who choose Linux are unlikely to accept a third party having the final say over their computer.

I, for one am disappointed that anyone has accepted it. Once it's widespread, service providers can demand it, as we're seeing with mobile banking apps and game anticheat.

[Cu3PO42]

I also strongly dislike requiring remote attestation for any kind of software I want to run. But what I also dislike is cheaters in my online games and I genuinely do not have a better suggestion on what to do.

Personally, I run Windows purely for gaming and don't let it near any important data. For the latter, I boot into Linux with separately encrypted disks.

[amiga386]

>But what I also dislike is cheaters in my online games and I genuinely do not have a better suggestion on what to do.

You can't suggest "run online games as close-knit social groups, with social exclusion punishments for cheaters", which is how most online games used to be run. How old are you?

Game vendors used to be happy letting us host and run our own multiplayer games, until they realised they could get more money out of us -- "battle passes", microtransactions, ability to forcibly turn off multiplayer of older game when newer remake comes out -- and now they've made themselves a mandatory part of your online experience. You have to use their matchmaking and their servers. So now it's down to them to solve the problem of cheaters, enabled by their centralised matchmaking... and their only solution is remote attestation of your machine and yet more data collection?

[progbits]

I'm doing the same but I worry about windows compromise messing with the bootloader so then encrypted linux drive won't save me. Probably too paranoid though?

[Cu3PO42]

If you use secure boot and don't let your keys near Windows, you should be fine even if your Windows install is compromised. Unless you don't trust Microsoft themselves, in which case you'd need to re-enroll keys whenever switching operating systems, which is possible, but very tedious.