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.

For those running Fedora Asahi Remix, it's now possible to run sudo dnf install steam to even enjoy Steam gaming atop Apple Silicon devices while running this downstream Linux distribution. 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 with the open-source GPU driver stack.

This gaming support for Apple Silicon on Linux is coming together thanks to the maturing Honeykrisp Vulkan driver within Mesa. The Honeykrisp driver is still working towards sparse texture support for enabling more Direct3D 12 games to run. And while Honeykrisp is upstream within Mesa, the DRM kernel driver that's Rust-based still remains outside of the mainline Linux kernel and thus for end-users primarily means Asahi Linux is where you need to go for an easy out-of-the-box experience.

More details and screenshots of the improving gaming support for Apple Silicon devices atop Linux via Alyssa's blog.