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PayPalDeveloper Alyssa Rosenzweig has given an update in a blog post and a presentation at XDC 2024 going over work to improve Linux gaming on the Apple M1/M2 with Asahi Linux.
They announced their "Asahi game playing toolkit" which brings together their Vulkan 1.3 graphics driver, and x86 emulation with Windows game compatibility (using Proton amongst other things). It's all still "Alpha" level quality, but good enough to run some AAA games now. Unlike Apple's own macOS, Asahi Linux has the only conformant OpenGL®, OpenCL™, and Vulkan® drivers for this hardware (as Apple focus on their own API - Metal).
All you have to do is install the Fedora Asahi Remix on your Apple system, get the latest driver updates and then install Steam although they said "most games require 16GB of memory due to emulation overhead".
Pictured - Fallout 4 on Apple Hardware with Fedora Asahi Remix
Incredible work to make more hardware not only able to run Linux nicely, but become actual proper gaming machines too. Sounds like it's been a thoroughly complicated process, with many contributors but the end result looks great for users.
More work is to be done yet on the Honeykrisp driver, like "Sparse texturing" up next which they said will "unlock more DX12 games" but it's already good enough for titles like Fallout 4, Hollow Knight and Cyberpunk 2077.
More in their blog post, and you can see their talk during XDC 2024 - Day 2 in the below video with the talk starting at about 20:46 (they do eventually start speaking English):
Direct Link
Last edited by LoudTechie on 11 October 2024 at 9:14 am UTC
I'm getting really curious how well Windows on Arm binaries fare on Asahi Linux.
She emulated the moon out of it, but in theory that could get better.
Having read her post.
I'm getting really curious how well Windows on Arm binaries fare on Asahi Linux.
She emulated the moon out of it, but in theory that could get better.
I asked Hector Martin (marcan) about performance and didn't get any number, but his answer was interesting anyway, so if anyone wants to read (on Mastodon): https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/113284495545738031
The ever increasing power requirements for modern GPUs (the GTX 1080 only needed 180 W) makes me more interested in the developments in integrated graphics and ARM improvements. I could see myself getting an used Mac Mini in a few years or we maybe finally get some good competition in that space.
I don't follow the project too closely but it's always exciting to see just how much it improves in such a short time. Not to mention how this will contribute to general ARM (or even other architectures) improvements.
The ever increasing power requirements for modern GPUs (the GTX 1080 only needed 180 W) makes me more interested in the developments in integrated graphics and ARM improvements. I could see myself getting an used Mac Mini in a few years or we maybe finally get some good competition in that space.
Thanks to the arts of open source and software abstraction it has improved all c supported architectures and software that runs on Apple Silicon.
Last edited by LoudTechie on 11 October 2024 at 11:48 am UTC
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