Microsoft has long wanted to get vendors out of the kernel. It’s a huge privacy/security/stability risk, and causes major issues like the Crowdstrike outage.
Most of those issues also apply to kernel anti-cheat as well, and it’s likely that Microsoft will also attempt to move anti-cheat vendors out of kernel space. The biggest gaming issues with steamOS/Linux are kernel anti-cheat not working, so this could be huge for having full compatibility of multiplayer games on Linux.
Thanks for the well thought response, you made quite a few points, but let me try to clarify where I’m coming from:
Windows 11 requires all computers to have TPM 2.0. It’s a crypto chip used for allowing vendors (re: Microsoft) to add secure keys at a hardware level, which will then allow software to verify that the software, operating system, and hardware are “unmodified”.
In a nutshell this process for allowing software to ensure that the OS and hardware are not compromised nor modified is called “attestation”.
And it’s something Google has (successfully) introduced into Android and they’re now “turning the screws” .
This means that the Windows of the near future, will begin to “limit access” to the OS (ie: kick people out of the kernel), only allowed signed device drivers, etc.
The next step will be restricting “sideloaded apps” and funnel people through the “officially supported apps store”. Once that happens, sideloading will either be removed or crippled.
When it comes to gaming: there won’t be any need for anti-cheat measures, because Microsoft will know (and will disable itself or the app) if you’ve modified the OS or any app/game (this could include installing a game on a newer or older version of Windows)
This is the future of computing. It’s already happening to cellphones. I’d read a great article (that I, sadly, cannot find) that talks about how technology like attestation have software vendors treat the user as an untrustworthy person. The upshot, for the user, is that if they get infected will malware or a virus the OS will know and will react accordingly. The downside, for the user, is that the freedom we have today - to install or configure our OS to our liking will be a thing of the past.
These changes won’t happen overnight, but it has and will be a slow boil.
I think that’s a very big stretch and I don’t think we’ll see that any time soon. Microsoft is already losing market share and they can’t do much more of this type of stuff because more and more people are getting annoyed. (Including ones with a following such as PewDiePie)
Anyways, Linux is great.