What’s best practice to safely play pirated games on Linux? Looking to mitigate potentially malicious executables from wrecking havoc on my system.
What’s best practice to safely play pirated games on Linux? Looking to mitigate potentially malicious executables from wrecking havoc on my system.
Get scene releases from trusted sources (not public trackers) and ensure that the hash matches what is in the nfo on predb.
I disagree with the “not public trackers” part. Private trackers are better in a lot of ways but not everyone wants to bother with them. Stick to reputable release groups on public trackers and you’ll be fine.
That’s fair. As long as the hash matches what is in the predb nfo, you should be good to go. I have encountered legit looking releases on public sites with edited nfo files though so definitely double check against a reliable source ce for that.
I’ve only ever downloaded from public trackers (cause it’s impossible to maintain the required seed ratio on private trackers and Debrid services are better anyway); never had an issue ever over 20-some years of torrenting ever. I don’t bother verifying checksums cause it’s unnecessary paranoia. All the major public trackers have good moderation teams; the malicious garbage gets called out in the comments and removed rather quickly.
All the private trackers I use have bonus systems so you can still build ratio. It’s usually a slow start on a new tracker but once you get established it’s very easy to keep a 1:1 or better ratio. I don’t bother with debrid services because paying for piracy is where I draw the line.
As for checking hashes, I don’t do it on any of the private trackers I use but OP seems overly paranoid so I figured it was solid advice for them. I always checked when I still used public trackers. Only twice did I ever find a mismatch, one was actually malicious and the other was just a random crc error.
But again, why bother paying for a private tracker, when I can just pay for Real-Debrid instead and not worry about silly ratios, since every torrent is a direct download straight from their servers.
I’ve never paid for a private tracker but users can donate if they want. Like I said, I have a firm belief that piracy should be free. Never paid for it, never will. A good tracker with top site bots and well seeded torrents is good enough for me. Releases are on there within minutes, download speeds that max out my connection are good enough for me.
I’m considering getting back into pc gaming, it’s honestly been a couple decades so I’m ludicrously out of touch. On top of that I don’t know shit about wine, in my 10-15 years of running linux I think I’ve only run wine one time, right after making the switch. I quickly decided using native apps was easier and I’ve never really needed any software badly enough.
Anyway, my assumption is that linux piracy is so scarce that I’d be better off just looking to run windows cracks through wine, is that accurate? Are there any decent private trackers for games with a reasonably low entry barrier (an interview process for example)?
My experience with Linux is very limited other than my steam deck. For cracked games, if there is no Linux version available, I usually install them on my windows pc first, copy the games folder to the deck then add it to the library as a non steam game. After that you just specify the proton version in the games steam properties and it runs.
Ideally you would want native Linux versions. Those are few and far between but they do get released from time to time.