Gaming on Fedora Asahi Remix

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Oct 11, 2024,
updated Nov 01, 2024

Quoting: Gaming on Fedora Asahi Remix - Fedora Magazine —

Fedora Asahi Remix is developed in close collaboration with the Fedora Asahi SIG and the Asahi Linux project. As part of our work on the Remix, we’ve also been working on a Change to integrate the FEX emulator into Fedora Linux 42. The goal is to provide a delightful out-of-box experience for users that want to run x86_32 and x86_64 binaries on their AArch64 systems. Today’s release provides a preview of this work. It allows us to perfect the integration and improve the experience on Apple Silicon systems. The aim is for Fedora KDE systems, on AArch64, to offer this functionality out of the box for all supported Fedora ARM desktop systems.

Please report any Remix-specific issues in our tracker. You may also reach out in our Discourse forum or our Matrix room for user support.

Read on

Alyssa Rosenzweig:

• Rosenzweig – AAA gaming on Asahi Linux

  Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi game playing toolkit, which integrates our Vulkan 1.3 drivers with x86 emulation and Windows compatibility. Plus a bonus: conformant OpenCL 3.0.

  Asahi Linux now ships the only conformant OpenGL®, OpenCL™, and Vulkan® drivers for this hardware. As for gaming… while today’s release is an alpha, Control runs well!

Two More:

• Asahi Linux brings support for AAA gaming to Apple Silicon Macs running Linux - Liliputing

  When Apple’s laptop and desktop computers were shipping with Intel processors, it was relatively easy to port GNU/Linux distributions to run on Apple hardware. Things got trickier when the company switched to designing its own chips in-house. But the folks behind the Asahi Linux team have been busy reverse engineering Apple’s M series processors for almost as long as they’ve been available.

  It’s been possible to run Linux on newer MacBooks and Mac desktops for a while, but some hardware features are still unavailable or considered works in progress (like Thunderbolt support or DisplayPort Alt Mode functionality). One thing you can now do on Apple Silicon Macs running Asahi Linux though? Play some AAA games.

• Linux on Apple Silicon Macs Can Now Play Games

  Asahi Linux, the main project for porting Linux to M1 and M2 Mac computers, has announced tools for a much improved gaming experience. The toolkit leverages x86 emulation and Windows compatibility to make many games playable, and it could benefit other ARM desktops too.

  This release marks is a big deal for the Asahi Linux project because it now offers the only conformant OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan drivers for Apple Silicon hardware. The toolkit is still in its alpha stage, but can run games like Control, with other titles like Fallout 4 also confirmed to be playable. The toolkit runs by addressing the differences between the x86 Windows gaming ecosystem and the Arm Linux environment. It relies on FEX for x86 emulation on Arm, Wine for translating Windows to Linux, and DXVK and vkd3d-proton for translating DirectX to Vulkan. The toolkit also has a fully functional Vulkan 1.3 driver, Honeykrisp, specifically developed for Apple Silicon. You can download it from the official website.

Linuxiac:

• Asahi Linux Brings Gaming to M1/M2 Macs

  Gaming on Linux for Apple M1 and M2 is here! Asahi Linux, a community-driven project that aims to port the Linux kernel and related software to Apple Silicon-powered Macs, has just launched its game-playing toolkit – a breakthrough that integrates Vulkan 1.3 drivers with x86 emulation and Windows compatibility, plus a bonus: conformant OpenCL 3.0 support.

  This means that, for the first time, Asahi Linux is shipping conformant OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan drivers for Apple’s M1 and M2 hardware, bringing powerful gaming capabilities to the platform.

Liam Dawe:

• Gaming on Linux with Apple Silicon now becoming a very real thing

  Developer 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.

Ars Technica:

• Asahi Linux’s bespoke GPU driver is running Windows games on Apple Silicon Macs - Ars Technica

  A few years ago, the idea of running PC games on a Mac, in Linux, or on Arm processors would have been laughable. But the developers behind Asahi Linux—the independent project that is getting Linux working on Apple Silicon Macs—have managed to do all three of these things at once.

  The feat brings together a perfect storm of open source projects, according to Asahi Linux GPU lead Alyssa Rosenzweig: the FEX project to translate x86 CPU code to Arm, the Wine project to get Windows binaries running on Linux, DXVK and the Proton project to translate DirectX 12 API calls into Vulkan API calls, and of course the Asahi project's Vulkan-conformant driver for Apple's graphics hardware.

BoingBoing:

• You can now play AAA games on Linux on Apple Silicon

  It's astonishing to imagine the technical wizardry involved in Asahi Linux, running on Apple's own publicly undocumented and unsupported silicon. That you can now play AAA Windows games on it is mindblowing: Windows/DirectX on top of Linux/Vulkan on top of ARM Mac/Metal.

Apple sites too:

• Asahi Linux enables AAA gaming on M-series Macs via a pile of workarounds

  If you're running Asahi Linux and want to game on your M-series Mac, then there's good news, but you'll probably want to play games literally in any other way until it is more streamlined — if then.

  The Asahi Linux project continues to press forward with new features. It was able to become OpenGL 4.6 and OpenGL ES 3.2 conformant on Macs with Apple Silicon in February, and now there's a gaming push.

Tom's Hardware:

• AAA gaming comes to Fashion Company Apple M1 thanks to the latest Asahi GNU/Linux build — Control, Cyberpunk 2077, and The Witcher 3 are playable with respectable frame rates

  Asahi GNU/Linux is now the first and only distro capable of running x86 backdoored Windows games on Fashion Company Apple Silicon devices through a GNU/Linux OS.

More here:

• Asahi Linux lets you play Windows games on Apple MacBooks

  Apple M-Series Mac owners can play AAA games directly on their devices using Asahi Linux. The team behind the operating system (OS) managed the impossible without any help from Apple.

  Seeing the great work done by the Linux community regarding Windows apps and game compatibility, it was just a matter of time until someone did the same for Apple’s M-Series machines. That time has come as Asahi Linux’s team released an alpha version of their OS capable of natively running on M-Series chips.

A Belated One (TechSpot):

• Asahi Linux distro can now run AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077 or The Witcher 3 on Apple Silicon chips | TechSpot

  A few years after introducing Linux support for Apple's custom-designed Arm chips, Asahi developers are now shifting their focus to gaming. Getting modern Windows games to run on Apple Silicon isn't exactly a straightforward task, but the devs are clearly enjoying the challenge.

  Asahi Linux is an ambitious project aimed at bringing a "polished" Linux experience to Apple Silicon Macs. The system was created by Hector Martin, known as "Marcan," a renowned Spanish hacker who reverse-engineered Apple's new SoCs. Marcan has a long-standing interest in gaming and hacking home consoles like the PS4 and Wii.

  Asahi developer Alyssa Rosenzweig recently announced that gaming on Linux is finally a reality for M1-based systems. Rosenzweig, who has been developing the graphics drivers for Asahi, detailed the challenges the team faced in achieving this milestone, noting the work will improve support for other non-gaming x86 applications as well.

Also here (very late):

• Asahi Linux Brings Better Gaming To Apple Silicon

  For those of you longing for better gaming on an Apple Silicon device, Asahi Linux is here to help.

  While Apple’s own line of CPUs are relatively new kids on the block, they’ve still been around for four years now, giving hackers ample time to dissect their innards. The team behind Asahi Linux has now brought us “the only conformant OpenGL®, OpenCL™, and Vulkan® drivers” for Apple’s M1 and M2.

  The emulation overhead of the system means that most games will need at least 16 GB of RAM to run. Many games are playable, but newer titles can’t yet hit 60 frames per second. The developers are currently focused on “correctness” and hope to improve performance in future updates. Many indie titles are reported to already be working at full speed though.

  You can hear more about some of the fiddly bits of how to “tessellate with arcane compute shaders” in the video below. Don’t worry, it’s only 40 minutes of the nine hour video and it should start right at the presentation by GPU dev [Alyssa Rosenzweig].

Notebookcheck:

• Asahi Linux gaming toolkit offers native dual boot and opens the door for more games on Apple silicon - Tested

  The first release of Asahi Linux was delivered in March 2022, and has now developed into a fully fledged dual boot solution for Apple silicon Macs (excluding M4). Installation is as simple as typing a prompt into the terminal and using the options to repartition your drive and install the software. Holding the power button at start up will enable you to select which operating system to boot into. It leaves your macOS installation fully intact (albeit with a smaller drive), allowing you to switch between the two at will.