Try Mineclone 2. It's an open-source libre Minecraft clone which runs on top of the Minetest voxel engine and has 99% (almost) feature parity with MC 1.12, can be expanded with hundreds of mods and it runs natively in Linux. You'll be surprised at how polished it is already. In fact, it's so similar to the original Minecraft 1.12 in both gameplay and appearance that it surprises me that Microsoft/Mojang hasn't threatened a lawsuit (yet). I downloaded it just out of curiosity some time ago and now I play it more often than Minecraft itself because of all the fun mods I can try.https://www.minetest.net/downloads/
Alternatively you can try MultiMC as an alternative Minecraft launcher, never had an issue with it.
throwaway290|3 years ago
This is probably related to the fact that MultiMC dev allegedly works for MS now.
So even if you paid your hard-earned $30 for Minecraft back in the day, now you apparently also have to pay Microsoft the PII tax in the form of an active phone number.
(Microsoft mines phone numbers via the shady practice of letting anyone quickly migrate their Mojang account, and then within weeks alleging suspicious activity violating ToS. Once it happens, you get a screen that offers none of your previously configured 2FA methods, such as backup codes or TOTP app, requiring you to receive a PIN via SMS. In the end, players submit their numbers voluntarily, because the alternative is to spend hours upon hours bickering with tech support without clear guarantee of success. Upon gaining access and inspecting this 'suspicious activity' players appear to inevitably find it to consist exclusively of their own logins from the same home IP they always use.)
julisox|3 years ago
>Microsoft mines phone numbers
This seems to be more or less standard practice now. Happened to me with several companies. They let you sign up with just an email address, then after a few days or weeks they block your account because of "suspicious activity" and ask for a phone number. Very annoying.