My primary concern is malware.

What are your thoughts on https://incognet.io/?

I shall most likely be doing so. It is a means of owning the original install files for the game. From a privacy standpoint, still not as good as buying it in a shop with cash but it is most certainly a step in the right direction. There was a time when I pirated simply because I wanted to try things out for free when demos became less popular. Then it led to why bother buying it now. However, as I have matured I am happy, moreover I want to pay for something I have tried and enjoyed to support the creator so long as I have ownership and can do with it what I like. I do not want to support the conditional ownership systems that are developing, telling me how I may use something that I have purchased. Or that I do not truly own it such as is the case with most digital "purchases".

You seem very relatable in several areas I have identified, like minded and able to comprehend my point of view. Able to explain without condescension. I am new to socialising online (in general really, trying to step out of my shell). I found the fediverse on my travels to escape big tech, see my original post here. If you do not mind sharing your thoughts, where would you recommend looking for someone socially awkward, very concerned over privacy but not to the point where that becomes the central point of discussion as it can be a little triggering, a place to discuss things intellectually yet open and respectfully of one another?

I am just curious to hear your thoughts on this point. Thanks.

I'm not completely against it. I do recognise its threats to privacy, the planet, and intellect though. The average person trusts it too much.

Personally, I do not use it that much. I do however use it to help with research. I find being able to ask a question quite useful as a jumping off point for further research. I do not rely on it to answer correctly, simply to aid in pointing me in the right direction. Then I go off and do more specific research.

I have been moving from windows 10 to linux mint recently, it was quite useful in aiding with this at times. Not all the time, just at the right times. If there were a particular issue I was struggling with it could help point me in the right direction, though I would not trust it to simply spit out the right advise and commands to type to fix an issue without researching exactly what those commands did, how that would potentially help fix the issue and how to revert if it messed something up. I have seen many examples where the advise it gave was terrible and potentially destructive because I researched the advise it gave, had I of not it would have really messed things up. It must be used responsibly.

People are all to quick to talk into their phones, get a response and trust it to be all knowing. Their queries are forever recorded and logged to their personal identity without and option to opt out. I use privacy orientated search engines with ai functionality such as duckduckgo and ecosia. Ecosia makes it very easy to verify the sources of information given from their ai, also they put in efforts to be as green as possible. Very respectable.

So no, I am not against ai. I am against the usual way in which the average person uses it and the way the majority of companies are using it to exploit people and the planet to turn a profit.

Ah I did mean that the VM would be using proton inside. i.e. proton would be running in the guest os. I think it was my bad wording.

Thanks for confirming what I'd heard about wine / proton not being the same as virtualisation when it comes to preventing malware from running just because it is now on linux. I am also fully aware that just because something is inside a vm, does not mean malware cannot escape. I am just trying to make it less likely.

I would like to forget about windows, everything linux. So the VM would be linux using proton, my thought is that a vm isolates stuff inside it from the host os, thus allowing you to run malware inside the sandbox. Yes there is still a risk malware can get out, but far less of a threat than just running it in the host os. So, like I can do with applications and fully utilise the CPU, I'd like to do the same for the GPU.

I have heard that malware designed for windows can still run under linux due to the way wine / proton works. So I thought using a VM could offer a solution, or at least a step in the right direction.

What is an online game? Everything at the moment, when pirating, I am in control. Need no internet connection, no account, just execute and run like when I used to buy a game on a CD. That is why I am looking at GOG.

Can you recommend any tutorial videos for qemu and kvm setup and usage for linux?

My threat? I want to take precautions from installing malware on the linux system when running pirated games. Like on windows, running pirated applications in a vm. But I'd like to do it with games.

Could you please explain a little more on what X11 and wayland are? My current level of understanding is just that I am running the cinnamon desktop environment. How can I find out the information you are looking for? Also, why is it that going into ctrl+alt+f1 and then ctrl+alt+f7 to go back, resolve the issue? Thanks for your reply.

Thank you for your reply, this sounds on track to what I am looking for.

Very interesting on the clean file + emulator route. Sounds like a similar line of thinking to my signed / hash checked GOG installer thoughts.

Regarding using a VM with a GPU passthrough, what software would you recommend for doing this with? I am very familiar with virtualbox and do prefer a GUI though I recognise I will probably have to adapt in order to get what I want.

Thanks again.

The drivers tool shows everything as OK. Also of note, I am using an AMD GPU so I am not dealing with any NVIDIA weirdness.

Firejail is definitely something I'll be looking into on the sandboxing front as it may be the better solution from the sounds of it. How does a sandbox compare to running in a VM? Technically speaking, is the VM safer? Though I appreciate the difference in this scenario may be very small.

Thank you for welcoming me. I still do use big tech, but when I want to now. I use invidious for youtube and redlib for reddit to avoid interaction with the sites themselves. I still have much of FOSS to explore.

This is a thought, thank you for your suggestion.

In defence of my pirating, it is more complicated that just getting stuff for free. See this comment.

Sure, there was a time I'd pirate just because I could, now I have matured there are real reasons and ethical dilemmas. The above comment explains things pretty well though.

Thanks for the reply. I have been progressing down the virt-manager route as it seems to come up a lot when talking about pass-through. Firejail is definetly on my list to research. Thank you.

Is there anything for linux with the ease of gui setup that comes with virtualbox, that supports gpu passthrough. Wherever I look there is a need to dive into the terminal and use multiple applications to get things running.

Thanks.

You are welcome.

Thank you for the helpful and informative reply. I think I will take a step back and just use linux for me. Like you say, take some time to get used to it and learn more about it. Also, take a break from trying to inform others of what is really going on with big tech. To be honest I am getting tired of being ostracised over all this. I want to help them see but it is clear they just cling to their existing beliefs. Even though when something goes wrong with their computer they come to me. This is something else I plan to take a step back on.

You are right on the privacy point, I once did not care either so I understand the mentality. But that was a long time ago. It is only now I have decided to do something more drastic about it as I have began to see where it is all headed and wanted out. Linux is just a part of that but it is one of the more drastic efforts for me to implement.

In my opinion, every OS has their pros and cons, and they all break in one way or another from time to time. I am under no illusion that linux is a magic OS that just works. I have fixed enough computer problems to know things go wrong. Hence the precautions I have made in the switch. I know much of the time it is user error so I have taken steps to have recovery options if I do something wrong or something unexpected happens. I plan to created virtual machines to tinker with rather than the installation I am running on.

I think your way of thinking about things is very sound and I shall be taking your advice to heart.

Thank you.

Thank you for your response.

Apologies on missing that it was you that mentioned those sites, new to lemmy and viewing through the unread messages area where it only shows the current comment, not the thread. I am struggling to see something I can click to bring the message up in a thread so I can see the message flow.

Thank you for the clues, I shall disappear down a rabbithole some time following your breadcrumbs.

Thanks, I'll look into crossposting for going forwards.

I'll check out firejail. Thanks for the recommendation.

Thank you for this, I spent an hour or so going though some of this guys videos as a result. Quite entertaining.

Thank you, your responses have been most helpful.

Yup, I used to check the signature / hash for GOG installers in windows. I'll have to look into how to do it in linux.

I'll look into qemu/kvm. Virt-manager rings a bell. Thanks, I'll look into all of that.

Do you have any site recommendations for clean steam / gog files?

Excellent, thank you I will check these out.

Have you got a link to a beginners guide for these? I am new to linux and am used to GUI's from windows. I am having a look around and found a couple of articles, going to look for videos next. But being new to linux and using the terminal more I'd gladly take the advice of someone more experienced such as yourself.