> Probably the most egregious. Why am I not allowed to compile my own kernel? Why do I have to get a kernel, and modules, from specific, approved, vendors?

So you can't compile cheats into your kernel? You want your own custom compiled kernel for hypothetical 2℅ performance gains in a synthetic benchmark? Just don't boot into it when you wanna play the game.

> Also all impractical for most linux users.

You don't represent "most" linux users. Define impracticality here because these are genuinely useful security features that you ideally should have even if you don't wanna play Fortnite.

> You may not spy on my memory, thank you very much. What's stopping Epic from taking snapshots and phoning home?

The fact that it would be a huge legal and PR nightmare for them upon getting caught which is very much in the realm of possibilities given the fact that it's not hard to tell if some eBPF byte code is doing that especially with LLMs making it a 100x easier nowadays.

> Preventing root from doing root things for the sake of it. I mean, maybe this makes sense.

Just don't boot into the kernel you want to tamper with when you want to play an EAC game. Problem solved

> They're also trying really hard to make Linux distros that "don't support this" look like the bad guys. They encourage distro maintainers to reach out to work together on the requirements, but many distros are effectively excluded by default (Arch, Gentoo, NixOS, which I believe have most of the gamers, at least in the online spaces I chat in).

You just made that up in your head. You can install a kernel that EAC will accept into any of these distros. Oh, and, did you just say most gamers in the online spaces you frequent use Arch, Gentoo and NixOS? I can buy Arch, sure, but NixOS? and especially Gentoo?! I guess that explains your comment and gives me context on why you decided to write what you have written. You're far from "most" linux users, buddy. Most people don't care if they've haven't hand-compiled their own kernel on the back of a notebook they bought in 1998. I myself use Arch and if I ever want to play such a game, I'll just boot into a kernel that has been signed by a key that EAC accepts and won't go around whining that Arch maintainers are bad or anything.

This is a good thing but I guess it takes time to let the copium wear off that a lot of neck beard linux users kept sniffing over the years when they couldn't find a good answer for people not wanting to switch because their favorite game wouldn't run by calling literally any closed source code running below ring 0, "rootkit" as if their UEFI and firmware is GPL licensed.

Gaming on Linux without cheating