Box86 v0.3 & Box64 v0.2.2 Released For Running Linux x86/x86_64 Programs On Arm

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Box86 v0.3 & Box64 v0.2.2 Released For Running Linux x86/x86_64 Programs On Arm

In addition to this week seeing new releases of FEX-Emu and Hangover for open-source projects aiming to run x86/x86_64 binaries on 64-bit Arm, the Box86 and related Box64 projects are out today with their own feature updates for helping to enable x86 and x86_64 Linux binaries on Arm systems...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Box86-0.3-Box64-0.2.2

[loganj]

so which one is better boxXX or hangover?

[lectrode]

so which one is better boxXX or hangover?

They accomplish different things. Box86/64 runs native Linux binaries, while Hangover (whose name is derived from it's relation to Wine) runs windows binaries.

[loganj]

i see but native linux binaries includes also wine/whatever

[sarmad]

How well does this work? Can it run any binary, or are there cases where the translation falls apart? And how is the performance compared to natively compiling the source code into Arm instruction set?

[kpedersen]

i see but native linux binaries includes also wine/whatever

I imagine Box*6* will need to end up interpreting more if that include the entirety of the Wine binary. Whereas hangover can run more on the native host.

However in practice, some benchmarks would actually be really interesting. Especially if it can drill into different problem domains.

[Developer12]

i see but native linux binaries includes also wine/whatever

Hangover doesn't do anything to go cross-architecutre. It's merely a project to enable it for wine, when used in conjunction with QEMU to do the actual heavy lifting. In theory it could be made to work with box86/64 or or fex or whatever, but would have to be modified for that to work. Might have to modify box86/64/fex too.

[andrei_me]

so which one is better boxXX or hangover?

You can check their blog post from last year, for the tested programs, box is faster

https://box86.org/2022/03/box86-box64-vs-qemu-vs-fex-vs-rosetta2/