yes, that’s why it’s called fingerprinting:

it’s a kind of mathematical function that takes the entire code as input and outputs a unique result.

the result is just some string of symbols (which really just represent a unique string of 1’s and 0’s).

this unique string of characters is, as mentioned, unique for any given input.

this string can then be compared to any arbitrary other string, and if they match, then you know it’s the same code.

so in the case of signal anybody can download the source, compile it, and verify that it matches the fingerprint of the compiled code on their own device.

that’s why it can’t be faked: you compare the already compiled code.

if even a single digit of the code is out of place, it’s not going to result in the same string, and thus immediately get flagged as a mismatch.

it’s mathematically impossible to fake.

if it’s just gaming, consider a side-grade to bazzite:

it’s an atomic fedora distro (even has a dedicated Nvidia installer), meaning it’s more difficult to break and easier to rollback when it breaks!

and it has a bunch of gaming related tools pre-installed, which is helpful, but not the main selling point imo.

anyways, yeah, linux gaming is really, REALLY easy these days!