Apple Silicon On Linux Now More Capable For Gaming With Latest Mesa + Steam On FEX

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Apple Silicon On Linux Now More Capable For Gaming With Latest Mesa + Steam On FEX

Alyssa Rosenzweig provided an update today at the XDC 2024 conference in Montreal on the open-source "Honeykrisp" Vulkan driver for Apple Silicon M1/M2 SoCs within Mesa and related work as part of the Asahi Linux project to provide for a nice Linux gaming experience atop the ARM-based Apple devices...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Apple-Silicon-Linux-Gaming

[cameron]

Genuinely crazy how seamless they integrated all the translation layers, that you can just `sudo dnf install steam` and start playing

[m4tx]

That's impressive. And it would be funny to see gaming on Asahi Linux easier than on macOS.

[sophisticles]

Fine, I will be the guy that says it: these people need to shift gears and stop trying to bring Linux to the Mac.

They come off as the same type of people that squat in other people's property and refuse to leave, it's a trespass mentality, like they are doing it out of spite,

What they should be doing is working on getting Linux to run perfectly on Qualcomm's Snapdragon, because honestly, if one wants Linux on ARM for the desktop, Qualcomm is where it's at.

Unlike Apple, Qualcomm is also actively working on bringing an ARM optimized GLIBC and since Qualcomm is actively supporting the effort, maybe the Asahi team could secure official sponsorship for an Asahi on Snapdragon distro.

That to me is the better play than this nonsense.

[hojjat]

Steam on Fedora Asahi Remix is leveraging FEX for emulating x86 Linux binaries on ARM and then with the likes of Steam Play (Proton / Wine) paired with DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for allowing Direct3D Windows games to ultimately run atop Apple Silicon on Linux...

I think this is not complex enough. Can I do this in a VM?

[access]

Fine, I will be the guy that says it: these people need to shift gears and stop trying to bring Linux to the Mac.

They come off as the same type of people that squat in other people's property and refuse to leave, it's a trespass mentality, like they are doing it out of spite,

What they should be doing is working on getting Linux to run perfectly on Qualcomm's Snapdragon, because honestly, if one wants Linux on ARM for the desktop, Qualcomm is where it's at.

Unlike Apple, Qualcomm is also actively working on bringing an ARM optimized GLIBC and since Qualcomm is actively supporting the effort, maybe the Asahi team could secure official sponsorship for an Asahi on Snapdragon distro.

That to me is the better play than this nonsense.

Sit down.

[access]

I think this is not complex enough. Can I do this in a VM?

There is a micro VM involved to handle the 4k vs 16k page mismatch.

[Serafean]

They come off as the same type of people that squat in other people's property and refuse to leave, it's a trespass mentality, like they are doing it out of spite,

Nope, it's an ownership mentality: my device, my rules.

[V1tol]

It has Vulkan, so it is already better for gaming than macOS

Fine, I will be the guy that says it: these people need to shift gears and stop trying to bring Linux to the Mac.

They are preparing for the close future when those devices will be considered obsolete by Apple. And since quality build of macs is almost always better than any other computer of comparable price, they last longer. And missing operating system support is the biggest roadblock here and installing alternative OS prolongs life of the hardware by a lot.

I have a Mac Mini 2012 with last real 4 core 8 threads i7 x86 CPU for them - newer ones had only 2 core 4 threads tops except for 2018 model (which was already too late to buy). Last supported OS was Catalina from 2019 (yes I am aware about Legacy Patcher). In Apple world nobody cares about supporting OS older than 2 generations so on this machine I can use maybe Firefox and couple of outdated apps. But, I can easily install Windows even without Bootcamp there or any Linux (since it is not a MacBook it has very little "unsupported" hardware). Now this beast works as silent and relatively performant file server (it can have 2 2.5" disks inside), home assistant gateway and torrent downloader - only thanks to people who years ago added quirks and workarounds for this specific hardware "nobody needs except under macOS".

[doragasu]

I'm missing some FPS numbers in the article, but this is clearly the work of wizards.