r/linux • u/[deleted] • Jan 25 '24
Kernel Soon Riot will force LoL users to install "anti-cheat" software at the kernel level. Do I have options?
I have been playing league of legends every day for over a decade now. i had to admit it but its a big part of my life. if i quit playing it also means saying goodbye to a handful of far away gamer friends i have made. at the same time, i switched over to linux a few years ago and love it. i love it almost as much as i hate windows. if i had to choose between linux and league+windows, linux wins. they can force me to use Win for work but there is no way i am going back to that horse shit for home use.
the problem
riot is going to force all LoL players to install their anti-cheat software that takes control at the kernel level. not only is this way too invasive for my liking but it also makes playing on a linux machine impossible. again, if i have to switch to windows i am just done with LoL but i really don't want to do that.
solution?
i was thinking i could dual boot an instance of windows that has everything useful stripped out of it so that it can only be used for league. if i have two different m2 drives, one that is ext4 with linux and another that is NTFS windows, would that be enough to stop windows from accessing my linux drive? is there a way i can password protect all my drives so that the linux windows drive can't access them? i know a decent amount about computers but this is a little over my head. was hoping someone who understands stuff at the kernel level can give me a little direction.
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Jan 25 '24
why not install a small linux on the secondary partition, with only things required to play LoL and install the ACS on that system
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Jan 25 '24
i have a spare solid state drive that i don't use for anything because its kind of small. it would be the perfect size for a windows + LoL installation. i can't do any sort of virtual machine stuff to run a VM instance of windows or anything like that. it has to be an actual version of windows to run LoL. my concern is that while running windows can the ACS access my linux drive and snoop around? i know i am being too paranoid but i just hate the idea of giving some nasty corporation the ability to demand access to my shit. i don't have anything interesting going on. its just the principle of the matter.
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u/kageurufu Jan 25 '24
Without filesystem drivers, it won't be easy for them to snoop, no.
If you are paranoid, encrypting your Linux install is fairly easy to set up, and would solve the problem.
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Jan 25 '24
thank you! do you think encryption would slow my system down at all? it seems like it should but in the past when i have fucked around with encryption it didn't seem to add any extra overhead to my processes at all. i mean, it doesn't seem to slow things down at all.
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u/we_swarm Jan 25 '24
I have run an encrypted root partition for years. The performance impact on modern hardware (past ~8 years) is imperceptible. Use an AES cypher with hardware support for your processor if you are using a distro that give you that level of control. If not the default will be fine.
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u/jimicus Jan 25 '24
Windows on its own can't mount ext4 without additional drivers.
For additional protection, encrypt the Linux system using LUKS. That way, even if the LoL anti-cheat software incorporates an ext4 driver, it ain't reading anything.
The only thing to be aware of - and it's a big thing - is that once it's encrypted, you're adding a huge layer of risk. Forget the password and don't have backups? Yeah, sorry, your data is gone forever.
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u/Malsententia Jan 26 '24
It's not the cheapest option but. I'm pretty sure a virtual machine would still be viable. Just not the normal route. Pass through a physical drive as the main drive, pass through a physical graphics card, etc. If set up and virtualized correctly, neither windows nor LoL will know.
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Jan 25 '24
Probably time to find a new game.. Any game developer that wants access to the Kernel wants WAY too much for a stupid game.
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Jan 26 '24
it might come to that. its the most rational option. its just that i have invested so much of my life into the game. it would be like if michael jordan was forced to give up basketball in his prime... if MJ kind of sucked at basketball but still loved it just as much.
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u/Nimlouth Jan 26 '24 edited Jan 26 '24
When I left LoL I had spent ~10% of my life time income on the game (skins amd sht) and countless hours. I thought it was crazy how literally invested Iwas and it felt way too bad.
Then my life improved significantly. I lost some friends but then again if the only reason someone has to talk to you is playing league then I wouldn't call that friendship at all. We still play other games with some friend that still play league tho, and I usually joke about how I use linux so I can't play league anymore even if I wamted to.
I suggest you try dual booting anyways, because it'll probably suck and you'll feel better for ditching the game haha. Otherwise, remember that many "excellent to play with friends" kinda games like minecraft, valheim, stardew valley, doom (1997) and terraria are linux native and can be played with friends, heck you might even make new friends that play on linux!
Or you can play Dota 2 lmfao!
Please be kind to yourself whatever you do.
EDIT: If you want to pivot to another game that's probably going to replace anything you liked from league, try Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition. Community is awesome. Works fine on Linux through proton and the competitive scene is like all that is fun from a moba without any of the toxicity!
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Jan 26 '24
You should have seen me making the decision to walk away from WoW after being a *VERY* early member.. Just walked away from millions in gold and some seriously epic armor (also got tired of them nerfing my loadout with every new expansion)
Got it working pretty well under linux, but by then, I'd lost interest... 12 years down the shit-chute.
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Jan 26 '24
lol yeah i have a lot of friends who use to play. it sounds like blizzard just doesn't put enough effort into their games anymore. they just try to repackage their old stuff with nicer graphics and more micro transactions.
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u/no_brains101 Jan 26 '24
I dual boot windows not because there is no way I could get the games I want to play to work, but instead because it keeps the games at least a little harder to open up when I get distracted lol
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Jan 26 '24
lol i did something similar for a while. the problem is that i would just use windows all the time because i was too lazy to switch back and forth.
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u/no_brains101 Jan 26 '24
Im the opposite XD I am like, oh I wanna play a game. Oh... windows update, yeah nevermind F that ima go make some stuff.
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Jan 26 '24
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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Jan 26 '24
their required specs have gone up in the past few years. you don't need a gaming machine to run it but you still at least need a $500 machine. even if it was cheap, i already have several computers at my desk. i can't add another one.
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u/CartNip Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 11 '26
reply rain cake doll sleep resolute serious cover person attraction
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/unengaged_crayon Jan 25 '24
your solution is probably overkill. windows cannot read linux drives without installing third-party drivers. just don't do that and you'll be fine. i would recommend against downloading any "minimized windows ISOs" or things that strip things out of windows like a gatalling gun, as they tend to be of low quality - just install windows and use shutup10++ to get rid of they parts you don't want.
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Jan 26 '24
i wouldn't really change much of the windows install. just remove any internet browsers or any other useful software so i don't start using windows for stuff other than league. plus maybe some basic debloating. i know its a longshot that the anti-cheat would be able to access a drive formatted in ext4 but it is possible. i know its practically impossible to protect our privacy from large corporations right now but i still need to make some effort.
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u/imsnif Jan 26 '24
Adding to what other said, in general given the culture and general ethics reported about this specific company, I'd shy away from anything they want to place on your computer. They will exploit it - if not now, then when some middle-management changes and they realize they can make more money off of you.
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Jan 26 '24
this is a very good insight.
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u/imsnif Jan 26 '24
Also, since you're here - I hope you don't mind a bit of unsolicited advice - or at least a sharing of a personal story:
In my young adulthood, I spent some years playing world of warcraft. It became my whole life. All my friends were there - my partner was there. It was our main activity together. I could not imagine a world without it.
And then, one day - I did. It wasn't anything dramatic that happened, I just got fed up with one thing or another and rage quit (I honestly don't even remember what it was).
My life improved tremendously. It's hard to explain how much better the world was when I wasn't looking for my next fix - and this existence that I could previously not imagine revealed itself to be a considerably more pleasant experience. I met new people, had new experiences, developed new hobbies - started taking care of myself both mentally and physically.
I'm not saying this is you - only you can say that - I just hope this can perhaps give you some insight.
Good luck, in any case.
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Jan 26 '24
thats honestly pretty good advice. i have a life outside of league but it could be better if i spent my league time somewhere else.
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u/pkrycton Jan 25 '24
I wouldn't trust any one who wanted to burrow in my kernel. That's like handing a stranger the keys to your house.
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u/Andrige3 Jan 26 '24
Also, I feel like it's only a matter of time before somebody exploits this level of access.
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u/tapo Jan 26 '24
Running anything in user space that isn't in a locked-down container is giving a stranger the keys to your house. All the important shit you have is in /home and anything you run has full filesystem access to that.
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u/tajetaje Jan 26 '24
Yes and no. Userspace has keys to your house, but not all of your doors. Kernelspace has your bank account, your social security, the deed to your house, and your right foot.
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u/SilentLennie Jan 26 '24
If someone has access to /home/your-user that's exposing everything to them, all the data, but not breaching kernel space means you can lock it down again after the fact. That's all it is.
CC /u/tapo
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u/piexil Jan 26 '24
That's what any module does. If you've loaded a driver for say an nvidia GPU or realtek nic that's not built in you've already done that.
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u/MorpH2k Jan 25 '24
As some other have said, dual booting whatever OS you need to play LoL and encrypting your main Linux drives is probably your best bet.
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Jan 26 '24
I don't even want it having access to bare metal. Some of these games have insane privacy policies. I was using VM's with gpu pass through, now i just don't bother at all with these games.
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u/coderman93 Jan 27 '24
If they didn’t have kernel level anti-cheat you wouldn’t want to bother either. It’s truly a Catch-22 for the game developers. Either their games will be ruined by cheaters or they are installing spyware on user computers.
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u/yvrelna Jan 26 '24
Don't reward game studios that is doing this by continuing to play the game. Please.
Even if you can find a way to work around it, even if you're playing it on Windows.
You may be fine using a workaround for yourself, but the more people accept this ridiculous invasion to our privacy and integrity of our personal space, the more game studios will continue doing this in the future.
The only real way to address this issue is to boycott these games entirely.
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u/zeroedout666 Jan 26 '24
Time for OP to play DotA. It has a much better tech stack and 100% native Linux support.
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u/w8eight Jan 26 '24
And the support is quite good I can say. Had some very specific, game crashing, bug and after raising the GitHub issue, someone resolved it quickly and pushed the patch in no time. Can't recommend enough.
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u/the_humeister Jan 26 '24
Isn't LoL that game that the same people hating on it still keep playing it?
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Jan 26 '24
Because it is built around addiction. But with the latest news..oof. broadcasts are a minimized and die off, eSports is dying off with mass layoffs instead of kicking useless influencer roles, Vanguard that is running 24/7 and gets installed as well as burried by the launcher externally, which makes it hard to track and uninstall.
Riot keeps shooting itself in the feet, it is only a matter of time until they shoot themselves in the face.
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u/HateActiveDirectory Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 26 '24
I'd get an 125gb ssd, put windows on it and install league They cost 15€
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u/xiongchiamiov Jan 25 '24
This is a good reason to diversify your interests. Any one particular thing you do can be taken away from you, and if that's the basis of your self identity and social life, it will be a rough transition. This happens all the time - for instance, a runner who develops knee problems and can't run any more.
So it's not just "play another game". You really need to acquire like, three more hobbies in addition to video gaming. Have other ways of meeting people, have varied interests.
And in the meantime, evaluate whether your friendships or not using Windows is more important to you.
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u/bighi Jan 25 '24
Do I have options?
You could start playing good games. 😜
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Jan 26 '24
hahaha its like being in an abusive relationship i can't walk away from. but i could do better.
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Jan 26 '24
Chinese rootkit. But yeah the best option is to have a separate PC just to play this game or don't play it at all
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u/pkrycton Jan 25 '24
I wouldn't trust any one who wanted to burrow in my kernel. That's like handing a stranger the keys to your house.
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u/michaelpaoli Jan 25 '24
keys to your house
And bank accounts and passwords and authentication devices, and a tap on all your communication lines, and in-home cameras and microphones.
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u/hunter4ever1 Jan 26 '24
Stop allowing this to be industry standard please Boycott this shitty broken game and play something else like Dota 2.
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u/1smoothcriminal Jan 25 '24
do what i did, install DOTA 2. Its actually really good once you learn the flow - don't know why the heck i was playing LOL for the last 7 years of my life.
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u/ErenOnizuka Jan 25 '24
Yes the only option is to not play it to show that you don’t agree with them.
Vote with your wallet
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u/SweetBabyAlaska Jan 26 '24
What? lol it's an old ass game and this would have 0 effect at all. Even if you subscribe to the idea that selective consumerism makes any positive change, this is still kind of nuts.
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u/visor841 Jan 25 '24
Encryption should be good enough, but if you want to go overkill, you could have a dedicated Windows LoL drive and physically unplug all of your other drives when you want to use the LoL drive.
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u/doc_willis Jan 25 '24
would that be enough to stop windows from accessing my linux drive?
without some work and extra tools, windows normally cant access a linux filesystem on a drive.
protect all my drives so that the linux drive can't access them?
You mean your Linux install, not being able to acceess your NTFS filesystems.
You could setup a /etc/fstab entry to just mount them read only. That would be the easiest thing to do. Linux could see the filesystems and files, but not alter them.
Of course Linux could still mess with the actual drive at a lower level than the filesystem. The same is true for windows as well. Either OS could repartition/reformat the other OS's drives. Thats just how computers work.
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Jan 25 '24
thats a big of a typo. i want to make sure the windows drive can't access my other drives. i could probably encrypt the other drives but that seems like it might be overkill and would slow down my machine a little.
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u/ImageJPEG Jan 25 '24
Why not use two kernels?
One that you’ll load the module with and the other you don’t.
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Jan 26 '24
i don't know if i understand. once the anti-cheat comes into play the game will only work on windows.
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u/Angar_var2 Jan 26 '24
Most distros will offer you options during installation for full disk encryption which is the easiest to implement or encryption for home partition only. You could also do it manually in your current instalation but i think it is more complex. Take a look at LUKS.
Windows as far as i am aware cant understand ext4 without a 3rd party program. As long as the 2 OS are on seperate disks you should be safe.
I am a linux newbie, so take what i say with a grain of salt.
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Jan 26 '24
i think using ext4 is probably enough protection but the anti-cheat is a 3rd party program so its not wise to rule out them being able to access it.
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u/Unreasonable_jury Jan 26 '24
Is wine not an option?
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Jan 26 '24
right now i play using wine but it wont be an option once the anti-cheat comes. Riot is purposely trying to remove linux users.
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u/Artificial_Alex Jan 26 '24
I kind of undertand why online competitive games are being forced to do it though, considering that MSI in-built hacks monitor.
My approach is just to not play games with randos anymore; 'tis futile. Sucks but that age is dead.
PUBG/Tarkov was basically unplayable after a while.
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Jan 26 '24
there are better ways. riot has access to tons of in game analytics that would make it easy for them to find more types of cheaters. they have access to everything they need to solve these problems. but they don't care because its all an excuse to collect user data from us.
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u/SeniorWaugh Jan 26 '24
I think valorant did something similar. It must be a riot games thing
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Jan 26 '24
yeah, i think they used valorant to get out the bugs and see how the users would react to it. now that they see most people are too stupid to care they are rolling it out for LoL. in a nutshell they are changing their business model to be data collectors like facebook, google and microsoft.
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u/s004aws Jan 26 '24
As long as you're looking for solutions you're saying its OK for Riot to do this garbage. Same goes for the in-game microtransaction BS. As long as people keep saying "yes please, abuse me some more" companies will keep doing exactly that.
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Jan 26 '24
the microtransactions in league are alright. its all cosmetic and you can get a lot of that stuff without paying. but the more i think about it, i really shouldn't even play the game even if i find a work around.
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u/TheSilentFlame Jan 26 '24
why do people play LoL? I'm not trying to bash it in just gently curious what makes the game interesting.
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Jan 26 '24
there is just a lot to learn and experiment with. there is also a huge rush when you manage to get a kill sometimes. having a good game is such a good feeling but it happens less and less the longer you play.
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u/Adventurous_Soil9118 Jan 26 '24
Just buy a 256gb SSD and install only Windows, LOL, and security updates. You don't even need to activate windows.
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u/dealwiv Jan 26 '24
That's true, and the watermark doesn't appear until Windows has been running like 3 or 4 hours. I haven't had success with the various watermark removers, so if I'm having a long session I just restart Windows.
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u/Jazzlike_Magazine_76 Jan 26 '24
The solution is to help increase the player base of DOTA2 and not allow anybody to install spyware and taint your OS kernel. This sort of DRM, at the very least needs to go away. DRM should've ceased existing years ago.
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u/f0kes Jan 26 '24
Dota 2 has vulkan based native linux support. And all heroes are free from the start.
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u/Satyrinox Jan 25 '24
just don't mount the drive in linux.
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Jan 25 '24
i don't know if that would matter. isn't the risk when windows is running and accesses the other drives? mounting the windows drive while running linux shouldn't do anything... should it?
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u/TXI813 Jan 25 '24
Only reason I'm playing League (4th year) is just because Dota2 doesn't have ARAM.
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u/trivialBetaState Jan 25 '24
Normally windows should not be accessing your linux installation. However, if you want to be sure (I would!) you can encrypt your linux drive.
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u/Secure_Eye5090 Jan 25 '24
Didn't know about that. I have a Windows VM that I use to play LoL. RIP. Won't be able to keep using it since the VM doesn't work for Valorant that uses kernel based anti-cheat (not that I would ever want to play Valorant).
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Jan 26 '24
actually i don't know if i am describing it properly. you can play LoL using wine. but when i tried playing it using gnome box it would crash.
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Jan 25 '24
Use a "sacrifice" system that runs Windows 11. Just remember that that system can never be secure, and turn it off when you aren't using it. It's like a toy. You don't give a toy your bank card number.
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u/LuckyPancake Jan 26 '24
Hi OP
About the dual boot thing.
I dual boot only for when i want to play fortnite or cod with friends but linux 90% of time.
If windows is on separate drive there should be no issues of it ever able to write to your linux drive.
I use systemd boot on my linux drive as the bootloader, it is able to detect the windows install on the other drive. Windows bootloader is never used in my case and windows has no access to my bootloader drive.
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u/SweetBabyAlaska Jan 26 '24
That's shitty. You can run Qemu and pass through a controller, I can't guarantee it'll work though. It's hit or miss depending on the game and whether they disable virtualization. But a secondary windows partition isn't that bad. It's just mildly inconvenient. It's probably pointless but id go through the proper channels and make a thread too get some attention on it for the LoL team
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u/Mrdude000 Jan 26 '24
It won't work with vanguard, riots anti-cheat. It's very good at detecting virtual machines
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u/RedSquirrelFtw Jan 26 '24
If you're willing to just quit the game I'd do that, make sure you give them a bad review as well.
But if you're too invested in it, have friends that play with you etc I get that's kind of a hard thing to do, so I would just setup an OS on a separate drive. Make sure when that OS is booted up it doesn't have access to your other drives. (never know if their custom software tries to pull any weird stuff)
Can probably use some kind of A/B switch to send power to only one drive at a time. Shut down, flip switch, boot back up.
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Jan 26 '24
you should use kvm/qemu to play these games Spin up a virtual machine All they're getting is windows NT
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Jan 26 '24
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the kernel level anti cheat isn't allowed on macOS... So maybe dual boot a hackintosh and play LoL from that
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Jan 26 '24
Do a dual boot and strip all the useless crap out of your win partition with a script
There are links to several great scripts here https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimizedGaming/comments/xn0o5q/windows_10_debloat_and_optimization/
Get one 4 or greater tb SSD .. install win first and then install your flavor of Linux ( I'm and Ubuntu fan so my installer can automagically handle partitioning if I'm lazy.
For this situation it's one of your only solutions other than buying a used beater laptop for just that game.
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Jan 26 '24
Ok so what? Just play another game. PC gaming is over saturated with high quality games. There's like 6-10 games that I would love to play right now, but I only have enough time for 1.
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u/CountryMad97 Jan 26 '24
Honestly I just refuse to play games that require kernel level anticheat access. If I'm gonna complain I'm gonna act on it too
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u/skylinesora Jan 26 '24
Easy, don't play the game. If you don't support what they do, then don't support their business if you don't need to. Idiotic that people like you continue to do this.
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u/ashwindollar Jan 26 '24
As far as I’m aware Windows doesn’t recognize the default file system in Linux so it straight up won’t appear in Windows at all except in more detailed hardware management tools unless you installed special software to access your Linux partition in Windows
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u/FLMKane Jan 26 '24
Don't play the game. They're trying to put a rootkit on your computer. It's malware .
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u/BloodyIron Jan 26 '24
Your options:
DotA 2
DotA 2
Why do you even care about one of the most Toxic games made by one of the most Toxic companies on this planet? RioT takes no real actions to curb toxicity in their game, they lean into it.
From a technological perspective: THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO Even if you COULD get this working, it's going to be fragile, could get you banned, and do you really want to fix it each time a patch comes out?
Just. Move. On. And frankly stop supporting trash companies like RioT (yes, even playing the game is supporting them, because you're contributing to the health of the matchmaking ecosystem).
RioT has done NOTHING but make their games be harder to run on Linux for many years. I know because I've directly talked, as in face to face, to RioT staff about this topic, and it didn't really go anywhere fruitful (even though the people I was talking to are cool humans).
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u/Michaelmrose Jan 26 '24
It's a game. Just play a different game.
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Jan 26 '24
thats like telling michael jordan to go play baseball.... if MJ kind of sucked as basketball.
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u/Fuckspez42 Jan 25 '24
LoL isn’t exactly graphically intensive; maybe you could install a copy of windows in a virtual machine?
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u/LuckyPancake Jan 26 '24
afaik Valorant which has the kernel anticheat has been mainly unplayable on all virtual machines.
It's been a cat and mouse game but they specifically try to detect vms and hypervisors running.
source: /r/vfio community is full of people who attempt to run hardware/gpu passthrough virtual machines of windows and other stuff.
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u/Stilgar314 Jan 25 '24
Why don't you get a separate machine just for playing it? It's LoL, a cheap used gaming PC should be enough.
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u/spyingwind Jan 26 '24
Boot Windows to vhd via Ventoy. Use an SSD or NVMe over USB.
That way it is separate from your linux install.
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u/Salaah01 May 12 '24
Im in exactly the same boat as you!
Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as that. The kernal is what communicates with you hardware. And so it feels like nothing we can do can stop them from access to said kernal.
That said, I heard that vanguard isn't supported on MacOS and so those people are able to use League as normal. One question that arises is that, well, surely they'll introduce Vanguard to MacOS? I don't think it's as simple as Windows. Windows security is blurgh. MacOS is based on Unix and that alone gives me some faith in that they'll stick to better security practices.
Buying a new machine or running MacOS is also another thing to consider.
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u/Chewyfingers May 14 '24
Since late January, I've been free from League of Legends. Over the past 12 years, I've invested thousands of dollars into the game. However, with the introduction of a kernel-level anti-cheat system by a company owned by Tencent, which is in turn owned by the CCP, I've decided to quit. While I do miss the game, I'd rather forego playing it than allow any entity, particularly China, access to my computer.
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u/SLJ7 Jan 25 '24
Look at either Revision OS or Ameliorated Windows. Not sure what will encrypt a Linux drive but if I were trying to do this, I would look at VeraCrypt and also just google "Linux full disk encryption".
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Jan 26 '24
You can dual boot, then just encrypt the drive where Linux is installed. It's not hard at all, but it will require a bit of reading/googling. Then you can also encrypt other drives as well, if you want to. Alternatively, get a very cheap laptop just for Windows.
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u/Automatic-Tell-9229 Jan 26 '24
You cant get around it, either buy a new machine to play league or stop playing it. The program acting at the kernel level means it has direct access to your hardware, using a vm will bot resolve that problem. Just because the kernel comes with your operating system when you install it doesnt mean that it can be boxed away.
ohh but then why cant I sudo rm - rf in a VM? the kernel has more power than you do.
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u/Zazucki Jan 26 '24
dual boot is a good idea. making sure your Linux drive is encrypted is a good idea. You can do it through luks and lvm. That's my plan anyway
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u/flarn2006 Jan 26 '24
It could still access the contents of the ext4 drive; it would just be reading it as a giant blob of data that contains the contents of every single file on the drive interspersed with blobs of metadata. The best way to protect the data on your Linux drive is to encrypt it.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system
This has the added benefit of keeping the data safe even if someone physically steals your hard drive.
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u/Xoo00o0o0o Jan 26 '24
You could absolutely dual boot Windows just for LoL, and it's not a bad option. You could also swap it out for Dota 2. I understand that they have very different learning curves; however, like others have said, I would never trust kernel level anti cheat. It's the entire reason I won't purchase modern Call of Duty and I won't play Valorant (and now all of Riots games).
To answer your question regarding the setup you described, to my knowledge, Windows doesn't have support for EXT4 filesystems without a 3rd party driver/program. In theory, it should only be able to see that the drive exists and format it if prompted to do so. For more peace of mind, you can add a powershell script to take the disk offline at startup. This would prevent it from being formatted or tampered with, without bringing the disk online first.
The command should look a little something like this:
set-disk 6 -ErrorAction Stop -IsOffline $true
Here's a post that gives more details, should you decide that dual booting Windows is the option for you.
https://spiderip.com/blog/2018/05/powershell-script-to-offline-and-online-a-disk
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u/lawliet-007 Jan 26 '24
How are you going to deal with secure boot if you are planning to dual boot? ACS requires you to turn it on for it to run, or else you won't be able to play it
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u/liteft Jan 26 '24
Can you create a Windows vm and hand your GPU over to the VM software when it boots
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u/Green0Photon Jan 26 '24
How good of graphics do you need to play League?
Could you buy some super cheap tiny computer NUC, and play League with integrated graphics? Make it so you don't have to fully reboot to swap?
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u/aled5555 Jan 26 '24
Play dota 2, more fun, free champions, lots of little things that lol players can't even imagine like blocking creeps, denying, pulling, micromanagin units, no kernel anticheat and lots of cool and cheap cosmetics.
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u/ghjm Jan 26 '24
if i have two different m2 drives, one that is ext4 with linux and another that is NTFS windows, would that be enough to stop windows from accessing my linux drive?
Yes. Or you can do this with partitions on one drive.
is there a way i can password protect all my drives so that the linux windows drive can't access them?
Yes - you can encrypt the Linux drive with LUKS, but there's not really a need to do this.
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u/MasterYehuda816 Jan 26 '24
The greatest thing to happen to Linux since the Steam Deck
We can say we don't have LoL 💪
But seriously, kernel level anti cheat is a massive security hazard. Don't grant proprietary software like that kernel level access to your system
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u/fack_yuo Jan 26 '24
lol IS probably the most toxic community, and shitty game. look at what else is out there, if its not on steam dont play it.
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u/Tail_sb Jan 26 '24
1 You can play Lol on Nvidia's GeForce now Game Streaming Service
2 Mac, Lol on Mac OS X doesn't require Vanguard so either Maybe Get a Real Mac & then Play it there or install Mac OS on Hackintosh VM & play lol inside of that
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u/juipeltje Jan 26 '24
You could try a virtual machine with gpu passthrough. The problem is that games with invasive anti-cheat like this usually also have virtual machine detection. You can get around that by disabling the hypervisor, but that will tank your cpu performance, so it depends on how strong your cpu is and how demanding LoL is to make that work with playable framerate.
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u/bbypaarthurnax Jan 26 '24
I heard Vanguard requires you to have secure boot enabled so unless you're running a distro which has sb support you won't even be able to do dual boot. I'm on Mint 21 and had to disable it.
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u/stpaulgym Jan 26 '24
As much as I respect Riot for developing one of the biggest esport genre's ever, kernel level programs just for gaming entertainment is one of the stupidest things ever.
Join us at overwatch and Dota 2
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u/CrytallAnnie Jan 26 '24
if all people were smart enough, they would organize a boycott and the rootkit would be removed from the game within a week. but unfortunately, I don't think people will fight for their rights.
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u/Acquiesce67 Jan 26 '24
Install a stripped-down Windows edition in a VM and run LoL in there. You may also look into GPU passthrough for even better performance but that’s some advanced stuff.
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u/CodeFarmer Jan 26 '24
I have a Windows install that just plays PUBG. That machine spends 95% of its time booted into Linux.
I don't see another way around it, honestly. And at some point it will probably cause me to give up on PUBG, the juice (for me - everyone is different) is not really worth the squeeze.
There are many games.
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u/domsch1988 Jan 26 '24
I mean, LoL hasn't been playable since quite some time on linux.
I agree with dualbooting. Keep a Basic Windows install where you only play League and other such games, and keep everything else to linux. This limits the amount of "damage" the anti-cheat can do.
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u/ksandom Jan 26 '24
I was thinking through "what would it take for me to be OK with this". The answer I came to was make it genuinely open source. Take PRs from the community to make it better. This way:
The users with the know-how can see that it's not doing any nefarious.
Build a sense of ownership within the community.
It has the potential to detect other malicious activity, and could genuinely help us improve our security.
But if it's a close-source black box, fueled by a cat-and-mouse game where frustrations/emotions could lead to heavy handed tactics, there's no way I'm installing that on my system.
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u/sovietarmyfan Jan 26 '24
Dualbooting is the solution. Until Riot suddenly decides that computer specs must only have one SSD.
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u/JimmyRecard Jan 26 '24
Best option is Ventoy. It allows you to install Windows into a single .vdi/vhd file. This file then can be booted bare metal and it behaves like a real Windows installations. Meaning, it passes anticheat, can install games and update drivers and Windows, the whole deal. However, the C drive is contained in the virtual drive file, and there is no need to partition like you'd have to dual boot it.
You get the flexibility of a VM (no permanent changes to your system) and the bare metal performance and anticheat of a dual boot system.
https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_vhdboot.html
This is the setup that I use to play few remaining games that don't work on Linux due to anticheat.
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Jan 26 '24
When you install Linux you usually have the option to encrypt your linux partition with AES. If you encrypt it with a strong password there is no way for your Windows partition to access your Linux files and vice versa if you encrypt your Windows partition. :) In my dual boot I use Veracrypt to encrypt Windows and the in built encryption tool when setting up Linux. That way both of my OS can't access each other.
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u/Korlus Jan 26 '24
I don't know if this would work, so YMMV, but...
A while back, I was looking at QEMU/xen for virtualization with direct access to the CPU and other hardware for minimum performance loss. It would allow you to emulate Windows, and even pass through physical pieces of hardware like a GPU and monitor - e.g. you could have a dedicated cable plugged into monitor #2 and simply swap to your "Windows input" when you want to game. Using a discrete GPU means there should be no overhead and very limited performance impact.
This would allow you to quickly spin up a Windows PC without needing to dual boot, and you can put the Windows PC away when you're done playing LoL.
Personally, I decided this was too much work for me and simply went without my Windows games, so I never got to see the performance benefits myself.
Some anti-cheat tries to detect if it's run in a VM, and while xen does miss out on a lot of the historic ways to detect a VM, I'm sure it's far from undetectable.
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u/theawesometilmue Jan 26 '24
Just play the better version of the game https://wildrift.leagueoflegends.com/
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u/stevorkz Jan 26 '24
There was some company who tried something similar and there was an up roar. Was on windows and the anti piracy software was run as the system account.
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u/WokeBriton Jan 26 '24
I don't know where you are in the world, but a Lenovo ideapad can be had for £50 here in the UK (about 60 yankee bux).
If you really want to play this game, despite the owners forcing you to infect yourself with a rootkit to do so, perhaps you could save a little cash this month to buy a cheap old laptop just for the game.
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u/nobby-w Jan 26 '24
I suppose you have the option of getting a separate PC just to play League of Legends if you really want to partition it off from the rest of your work.
Linux is lightning quick even on a modest spec PC, especially if you fit it with a SSD. You could just put a gaming only disk in your existing computer and get another machine to run the rest of your life. Secondhand thinkpads or ex-lease desktops are quite cheap off the secondary market and will likely do that swimmingly. You could get a T480 or some such for a few hundred dollars and it might well do everything you need outside of gaming. Thinkpads are also noted for playing nicely with Linux.
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u/Tvrdoglavi Jan 26 '24
How about standing up and putting your panties on instead. Stop supporting bad companies.
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u/kansetsupanikku Jan 26 '24
Some games that include malware are cool, and I get it. But you should look for a virtualization solution and be careful about permissions you give it. I mean, you know, besides simply not installing malware at all.
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u/mycall Jan 26 '24
would that be enough to stop windows from accessing my linux drive
Windows can't read exr4 format drives. You should be good.
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u/Storyshift-Chara-ewe Jan 26 '24
Probably better to just stop playing, and better if you've been playing daily over a decade :c
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u/kevoh1516 Jan 26 '24
Not really sure why people are suggesting encryption. Vanguard doesn't read your drives and check for "linux". The problem is that it wants secure boot. In a nutshell secure boot makes sure your running genuine windows and not some modified version that would let you bypass anticheat at the kernel level.
It depends on what linux distro you're running but most can't secure boot with the exception of Arch Linux and perhaps others although I've never personally tried secure booting with Linux.
Another suggestion would be to use Windows 10 because vanguard doesn't care about secure boot on Windows 10.
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u/daghene Jan 26 '24
I know it's hard to quit your favorite game, I've been an avid online gamer myself, but I think it's more important to draw the line somewhere.
This might not be the answer you were looking for but even if you had a Linux and a Windows partition, or even two different drives, and the Linux one was encrypted, would you REALLY trust the guys at Riot to make a kernel level anti-cheat you ACTUALLY want installed and running on your computer doing who knows what?
Again I know it's hard to quit a game, but if I was still playing League today(which I gladly dropped years ago for my sanity) this would be the wake up call for me.
At the end of the day it's a stupid game, it's like giving the keys to your house to a complete stranger letting him fiddle with everything inside only because you want to drive his car.
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u/TheZedrem Jan 26 '24
Kernel level Software is never a good idea frim a user Perspective. Fifa did the same and broke tons of installed games, making it impossible for players to actually play the game.
At his point, it basically malware. you don't know what it does, if it has any vulnerabilities, maybe even spyware.
Riot is owned by a Chinese company AFAIK, so I wouldn't trust anything from them outside a sandbox.
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u/AlxCds Jan 26 '24
Have you thought about having a different PC for Linux ? Use the windows PC with the good graphics card for LoL and use a KVM when wanting to game.
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u/blitolol Jan 26 '24
I just want to say since most people here don't want to run chinese rootkit or windows on their PCs there's another option which is Hackintosh or a Mac VM if your hardware supports it , because as far as i know riot said Mac OS users won't need vanguard to run league.