this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024

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Asahi Linux’s bespoke GPU driver is running Windows games on Apple Silicon Macs (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/linux

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Games are technically run inside a virtual machine because of differences in how Apple Silicon and x86 systems address memory—Apple's systems use 16 KB memory pages, while x86 systems use 4 KB pages, something that causes issues for Asahi and some other Arm Linux distros on a regular basis and a gap that the VM bridges.

Rosenzweig's post shows off screenshots of Control, Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, Ghostrunner, Cyberpunk 2077, Portal 2, and Hollow Knight, though as she notes, most of these games won't run at anywhere near 60 frames per second yet.

"Correctness comes first. Performance improves next," she writes.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

The work the Asahi team have done boggles my mind.

They've got further with gaming on Apple silicon than Apple has with their game-porting-toolkit.

Despite:

being on a completely unsupported OS
running through a virtual machine
having to rewrite all the hardware drivers from scratch, without the benefit of having hardware schematics/documentation
not having the benefit of using APIs that were made from the ground up to work well on this hardware specifically

And probably some other stuff I'm completely in the dark on because their work is so beyond me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Asahi Team is literally poking around some dark magic at this point

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Can you show where they’ve gone further than apples game porting toolkit or game translation layers? Genuinely curious because I haven’t seen any comparison but do know several large profile games have come to apple silicon recently.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

It’s not quite as good as gptk. Gptk can run games like cyberpunk at 60+ fps on more powerful Mac’s but Asahi currently can’t run AAA games at 60 fps. Also gptk has support for avx which Fex technically has but doesn’t work on m1 because the chip lacks SVE(2). However I imagine in the future asahi will almost definitely be better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I mean it more in terms of wider API support than in terms of outright performance. GPTK games, when they work, certainly run faster.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago

Windows games on Linux software and Apple hardware. what a time to be alive!

[–] onlinepersona 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I said it a while ago and it's getting much closer now: Linux will become the OS for people who want to game on a Mac. With all the work going into this, hopefully the devs are getting nice donations. They seem to be doing a better job than Malus at getting games to run.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

While it’s disappointing that the Mac, with all its power, hasn’t been a larger target for games, I’m happy there are more ways to play Windows games without windows.

[–] jeremyparker 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Please can we destroy Bill Gates’s open source legacy before he dies. I want him to see it die. I want him to be lying on his deathbed, reading an article in Ars Technica about gamers switching to Linux.

And by “please can we” obviously I mean “please can you,” I’m just a lowly full stack dev (aka a lamprey) who wears a Red Hat sweatshirt I got from a friend

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

@jeremyparker @lemmee_in "Open-source legacy"? 🤔

[–] jeremyparker 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Bill Gates has made anti-knowledge sharing his lifelong legacy, from crushing OpenGL by bribing game developers not to build in it, to pushing the US gov’t to give away COVID vaccines to poor countries rather than making the data available so they could make their own. His influence in the industry towards proprietary and closed source code is unmatched. Like, we all love the nerd jumping over the computer with the goofy smile but that dude is a piece of shit.

My point was that if we (you!) were able to level the windows/Linux gaming playing field before he died, that would make him mad, and make me happy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

@jeremyparker at least, I am very well developed into Linux gaming, I am not a competitive gamer, so I am in more than a good place, luckily I am already not a fan of the incompatible games like Space Marines 2
But I can only contribute by using, testing & posting on forums, I can't code well even if my life depended on it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not a dev but I do play games on Linux. Also what games does Apple even have? Most if not all are for Windows and some are only for consoles

[–] jeremyparker 1 points 2 weeks ago

I'm not sure tbh -- I use a mbp for work, but if I'm on it, I'm usually not gaming... That said, I bought a steam deck last summer and it's amazing. I haven't played a console or handheld in like 15 years so my thumbs are weak and flimsy... but spending a summer evening out on the stoop with the steam deck while watching my kids run around like kids... doesn't get much better than that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

@jeremyparker @lemmee_in BTW I made the first blow, I was a m$ fanboy from 1994 to 2019, then they made winlol 11 & I realized that lying was in their blood, so I have been using Linux since 2019 coupled with winlol, in 2022 I used only Linux-machine but yesterday I had to have winlol also, damn Gigabyte with their winlol-only support