> A significant negotiation took place late last year on Valve's side. Given its use of AMD hardware and experience, Valve attempted to engage with the HDMI Forum leadership to gain approval for the open-source implementation. ... Valve's SteamOS uses open-source AMD GPU driver components because the Steam Machine runs on an AMD RDNA 3 GPU, and the company's negotiations seem to have done their part.
A lot can be said about the proprietary and closed nature of Steam. But for a while, and even more in recent year, Valve has truly contributed in a good faith manner to free softwares and the linux community. Sure, it's to serve they own interest in selling Steam-branded hardware, but they probably could have gone the easier route that a lot of vendor ends up to where they contribute the minimum and keep a lot of things proprietary (making things like hdmi 2.1 support easier).
I've never understood this argument. I regularly run insmod and/or modprobe to load kernel modules.
I'm guessing it's because Linux constantly breaks ABI for out-of-tree kernel modules. And because every version of a distro can have a different kernel it's a nightmare of a support matrix.
That and Secure Boot establishing a chain of trust. Valorant requires Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 which means users can't modify the kernel driver. I'm not sure if Valorant wants to distribute their own Secure Boot keys and sign all the distro kernels + their module.
Because companies choose not to support Linux. Some popular ACs like EasyAntiCheat support Linux, but game developers (e.g. Facepunch/Rust) choose to block it.
Sure, the Linux kernel will let you load any unsigned kernel modules you want...but cheating is still possible (and happens) on Windows, so...
(Granted, trying to stop someone from running code on their own computer is a losing battle/stupid idea from the get-go)
its not hard to do measured boot with attestation and a set of trusted kernels. if you can check the kernel signature and config you know if the type of security anti cheat needs is there (memory isolation, lockdown, no unsigned modules). valve can set up a universal signing key list with steamos, ubuntu, cachyos, plain arch and all the other big distros. a lot of games already need a tpm on windows so hardware compat is not a big deal.
the problem is anti cheat vendors see linux as a small market so its not worth the effort to make it work. maybe valve can help by giving display priority to games that support linux and a warning banner for those that dont. or team up with epic games but gaben would probably have to invite tim sweeney to valve hq and personally explain it all.
The kernel driver for HDCP is about orchestrating it to happen on the GPU, not about implementing HDCP in software running on the CPU. I.e. the place you need to hack is in the GPU so it continues like HDCP is enabled even though it isn't, not the kernel driver asking the GPU to enable/disable HDCP normally.
Meanwhile, kernel level anti cheats live their full life on the CPU and the logic is itself the software driver. Hacking the software driver therefore gives you actual direct control of the anticheat behavior and functionality itself.
some people want to implement this DRM support and some others want to use this support.
freedom in this scenario is more akin to "you are free to choose" above "you should pick one of the free choices".
some people will decide for paid products and some people will consume closed source "evil corporation" software.
... while it IS "anti ethical" to some of its founders, it should be an individual choice of each user, after all its my machine, and i don’t have to care about what Stallman/whatever says I should or shouldn’t do with my stuff, the same way they have their right to tell me to go fuck myself for my choices.
Great point, if users want it, they should be able to use it for Linux. Hopefully this gets 4K working on streaming platforms now.
I just fear that HDCP is a Trojan Horse. It’s used to protect DRM content since its inception, but the powers that be can use it to control what you see on your screen. Feels like it will be abused given enough time.
* more people get more fed up with microsoft + gaming on linux gets more popular
* some few distros will be very oriented for closed source drm heavy software.
in this scenario the regular Debian "i wont install binary blobs on my machine" folks wont get affected, but certainly there will be "blackbox linux" distros with the "i have no idea what i am running" binary blobs kind of environment.
If the word is: "hey, you need this distro to play netflix drm content at 4k" a lot of people would pick that over the regular "opener source" stuff.
if it were viable to have some sort of "witchcraft, undecipherable, untamperable" linux pseudo variant that allows for intrusive anti cheat software for the games that dont support regular linux, we would be there already. I know I would be using that for being the "lesser crap than windows 11" that lets me play my comercial multiplayer games.
on the other side, if the day comes that "Linux from now onwards officially forces HDCP" the regular purist would ignore that without many problems... thanks to open source! and we would probably call this fork something else.
... therefore maybe this trojan horse is sign of the end, but mostly as the end of the "main brand name" and not of its forks.
> A significant negotiation took place late last year on Valve's side. Given its use of AMD hardware and experience, Valve attempted to engage with the HDMI Forum leadership to gain approval for the open-source implementation. ... Valve's SteamOS uses open-source AMD GPU driver components because the Steam Machine runs on an AMD RDNA 3 GPU, and the company's negotiations seem to have done their part.
Gaben be praised!
A lot can be said about the proprietary and closed nature of Steam. But for a while, and even more in recent year, Valve has truly contributed in a good faith manner to free softwares and the linux community. Sure, it's to serve they own interest in selling Steam-branded hardware, but they probably could have gone the easier route that a lot of vendor ends up to where they contribute the minimum and keep a lot of things proprietary (making things like hdmi 2.1 support easier).
> Sure, it's to serve they own interest in selling Steam-branded hardware
But that's fine, even preferable? I love it when my interests and someone else's interests naturally align themselves.
amazing how much valve has advanced consumer readiness of linux.
Isn’t Linux even supporting HDCP antithetical to what it stands for?
Linux also supports secure boot and locking down your accounts. Open technology doesn't mean everybody can do everything.
But why is anti-cheat so hard to build for Linux then? Because it needs kernel-level access?
I've never understood this argument. I regularly run insmod and/or modprobe to load kernel modules.
I'm guessing it's because Linux constantly breaks ABI for out-of-tree kernel modules. And because every version of a distro can have a different kernel it's a nightmare of a support matrix.
That and Secure Boot establishing a chain of trust. Valorant requires Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 which means users can't modify the kernel driver. I'm not sure if Valorant wants to distribute their own Secure Boot keys and sign all the distro kernels + their module.
Because companies choose not to support Linux. Some popular ACs like EasyAntiCheat support Linux, but game developers (e.g. Facepunch/Rust) choose to block it.
Sure, the Linux kernel will let you load any unsigned kernel modules you want...but cheating is still possible (and happens) on Windows, so...
(Granted, trying to stop someone from running code on their own computer is a losing battle/stupid idea from the get-go)
It's not hard to build. It's just very hard to guarantee it won't be tampered with, making it ineffective.
its not hard to do measured boot with attestation and a set of trusted kernels. if you can check the kernel signature and config you know if the type of security anti cheat needs is there (memory isolation, lockdown, no unsigned modules). valve can set up a universal signing key list with steamos, ubuntu, cachyos, plain arch and all the other big distros. a lot of games already need a tpm on windows so hardware compat is not a big deal.
the problem is anti cheat vendors see linux as a small market so its not worth the effort to make it work. maybe valve can help by giving display priority to games that support linux and a warning banner for those that dont. or team up with epic games but gaben would probably have to invite tim sweeney to valve hq and personally explain it all.
Won’t HDCP face the same tampering?
The kernel driver for HDCP is about orchestrating it to happen on the GPU, not about implementing HDCP in software running on the CPU. I.e. the place you need to hack is in the GPU so it continues like HDCP is enabled even though it isn't, not the kernel driver asking the GPU to enable/disable HDCP normally.
Meanwhile, kernel level anti cheats live their full life on the CPU and the logic is itself the software driver. Hacking the software driver therefore gives you actual direct control of the anticheat behavior and functionality itself.
I honestly don't know, but I assume HDCP can be implemented on the proprietary firmware blobs.
some people want to implement this DRM support and some others want to use this support.
freedom in this scenario is more akin to "you are free to choose" above "you should pick one of the free choices".
some people will decide for paid products and some people will consume closed source "evil corporation" software.
... while it IS "anti ethical" to some of its founders, it should be an individual choice of each user, after all its my machine, and i don’t have to care about what Stallman/whatever says I should or shouldn’t do with my stuff, the same way they have their right to tell me to go fuck myself for my choices.
Great point, if users want it, they should be able to use it for Linux. Hopefully this gets 4K working on streaming platforms now.
I just fear that HDCP is a Trojan Horse. It’s used to protect DRM content since its inception, but the powers that be can use it to control what you see on your screen. Feels like it will be abused given enough time.
HDCP1 is completely broken, you can buy HDCP2.x strippers on amazon (they're often marketed as "converters").
> I just fear that HDCP is a Trojan Horse.
yep.
overall what I expect to happen in a few years:
* more people get more fed up with microsoft + gaming on linux gets more popular * some few distros will be very oriented for closed source drm heavy software.
in this scenario the regular Debian "i wont install binary blobs on my machine" folks wont get affected, but certainly there will be "blackbox linux" distros with the "i have no idea what i am running" binary blobs kind of environment.
If the word is: "hey, you need this distro to play netflix drm content at 4k" a lot of people would pick that over the regular "opener source" stuff.
if it were viable to have some sort of "witchcraft, undecipherable, untamperable" linux pseudo variant that allows for intrusive anti cheat software for the games that dont support regular linux, we would be there already. I know I would be using that for being the "lesser crap than windows 11" that lets me play my comercial multiplayer games.
on the other side, if the day comes that "Linux from now onwards officially forces HDCP" the regular purist would ignore that without many problems... thanks to open source! and we would probably call this fork something else.
... therefore maybe this trojan horse is sign of the end, but mostly as the end of the "main brand name" and not of its forks.
Story from May OP;
Related discussion on this and additional DSC support then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48105874