I figured it out.

I added the Ubisoft Connect installer as a non Steam game, installed it with GE-Proton9-4, and then switched the shortcut to the location of “UbisoftConnect.exe”.

Then, in the launch options, I put:

PROTON_BATTLEYE_RUNTIME="$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton BattlEye Runtime" %command% uplay://launch/15657

And make sure the Proton BattlEye runtime is installed through Steam.

I played multiple full matches in a row like this without any issues.

Edit: Oh I almost forgot, you also need to get a copy of pdh.dll and put it in the game’s directory.

I’m not very old, but I remember as a kid my big sister would go to the local market and buy burned copies of movies still in theaters (which were usually a recording someone made of the movie in the theater).

Too bad its proprietary

Soulseek supports searching and it’s very simple to share, but it’s almost exclusively used for sharing music.

A VM is basically a program which emulates a computer. This emulated computer can be setup to not have internet access.

Wine is a reimplementation of large parts of Windows, for Linux, with the aim of allowing Windows programs to run on Linux. Wine DOES NOT protect you in any way, it has access to the same stuff any other running program does.

With Linux, there are a lot of ways to prevent a program from connecting to the internet. IMO for this kinda use-case, I’ll probably run the program sandboxed with Bubblewrap and just unshare the network namespace.

Usenet isn’t P2P

You could use streamrip to download high quality FLACs from Tidal and Qobuz if you have a subscription.

Can you recommend a good router that isn’t extremely expensive?

I did some research about a year ago and started using a router recommended by both random users and reviewers (TP-Link Archer AX-3000 I think) only to quickly find out it had a bad QoS implementation which broke applications sending IP packets with certain DSCP values (SSH by default, Mumble, VoWiFi on an iPhone, WhatsApp calls) so I switched back to an ISP provided router unfortunately. When I talked to TP-Link support they sent me firmware which would have allowed them to connect to my router using telent (absolutely insane IMO, especially since other users also complained about this issue).

Further research showed that many consumer-level routers have these kinds of issues, so I’m reluctant to try this again.

I used Soulseek almost exclusively for around 5 years, and I found that some obscure tracks/albums (mostly metal) aren’t available as FLACs.

Now I use streamrip with a basic Tidal subscription. It costs a bit of money but it’s very fast and has everything I searched for as a FLAC.

They couldn’t legally create a closed source SteamOS, but they also aren’t required to “upstream everything”.

I’m not a legal expert of any kind, but AFAIU they are only legally required to send you the changes they made to the source code on request (with GPLv3).

Though I disagree that this is Valve being nice, IMO doing this makes sense for most companies working in this space, as their code being accepted upstream means they benefit from anything the community has built up around the project, and they don’t have to play catchup with upstream.

IMO piracy is ethical in general.

You can pay to enter a museum to look at a painting, or you can look at it online, even print a copy of it and non one will care.

How is that different than seeing a movie online instead of going to a cinema? Really the only difference is that we’ve gotten used to pay for copies of movies, unlike paintings. These days you don’t even get to keep the copy you pay for.

Edit: I believe if you like some content, it would be nice if you could financially support the creator.

I just don’t think it should be mandatory, and I actually think all this money does is make the content worse over time.