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October 10th, 2024

AAA Gaming on Asahi Linux

Asahi Linux has released an alpha gaming toolkit for M1 and M2 Macs, enabling AAA gaming through Vulkan drivers, x86 emulation, and Windows compatibility, with future performance improvements anticipated.

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AAA Gaming on Asahi Linux

Asahi Linux has launched an alpha version of its gaming toolkit for M1 and M2 Macs, enabling AAA gaming on these devices. The toolkit integrates Vulkan 1.3 drivers with x86 emulation and Windows compatibility, allowing games like Control to run effectively. Users need to install Fedora Asahi Remix, update drivers, and install Steam to start gaming. The toolkit addresses the challenges of running x86 Windows games on Arm Linux by utilizing FEX for x86 emulation, Wine for Windows-to-Linux translation, and DXVK for DirectX to Vulkan translation. A significant technical hurdle is the difference in memory page sizes between x86 (4K) and Apple systems (16K), which is managed by running games in a virtual machine with a 4K page size. The Vulkan driver has been enhanced to support features like tessellation and geometry shaders, although some limitations exist due to hardware constraints. While many games are playable, newer AAA titles may not achieve 60fps yet, with performance improvements expected in future updates. The toolkit also aims to expand into general-purpose x86 emulation. This release is a collaborative effort from numerous developers in the open-source community.

- Asahi Linux's gaming toolkit enables AAA gaming on M1/M2 Macs.

- The toolkit integrates Vulkan drivers with x86 emulation and Windows compatibility.

- Users must install Fedora Asahi Remix and Steam to access the gaming features.

- Technical challenges include managing different memory page sizes between x86 and Apple systems.

- Future updates are expected to improve performance and expand capabilities.

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AI: What people are saying
The release of the Asahi Linux gaming toolkit for M1 and M2 Macs has generated excitement and discussion among users.
  • Many commenters express admiration for the technical achievements of the Asahi Linux team in enabling AAA gaming on Apple hardware.
  • There are discussions about the potential for improved gaming performance and compatibility with Windows games through emulation.
  • Some users question Apple's reluctance to support Vulkan and the implications for gaming performance on their devices.
  • Several comments highlight the desire for future support for newer M3 chips and additional hardware features.
  • Concerns are raised about the overall gaming experience on Apple computers and the challenges faced by users in this ecosystem.
Link Icon 34 comments
By @dcchambers - 4 months
From a performance and technical perspective this is incredible. Well done!

It will never happen, but my dream is for the Asahi devs, Valve, and Apple to all get together to build out a cross-platform Proton to emulate and play games built for Windows on both x86 and ARM hardware running Linux.

A Steam Deck with the performance and power efficiency of an M-series ARM chip and the entire library of games that run on Proton is just...dreamy.

By @Wowfunhappy - 4 months
> Tessellation enables games like The Witcher 3 to generate geometry. The M1 has hardware tessellation, but it is too limited for DirectX, Vulkan, or OpenGL. We must instead tessellate with arcane compute shaders

> Geometry shaders are an older, cruder method to generate geometry. Like tessellation, the M1 lacks geometry shader hardware so we emulate with compute.

Is this potentially a part of why Apple doesn't want to support Vulkan themselves? Because they don't want to implement common Vulkan features in hardware, which leads to less than ideal performance?

(I realize performance is still relatively fast in practice, which is awesome!)

By @gigatexal - 4 months
I’m just blown away at all the work they’re able to do with a platform that they basically reverse engineered. I’m glad to be contributing to their efforts. I’m also waiting for when M3 support comes! Such a cool group of engineers and hackers. I love it.
By @spease - 4 months
This is super cool.

So, wait, does this mean that gaming is better on Linux, on a Mac?

By @bee_rider - 4 months
The M-series chips from Apple have some special hardware to help emulate x86 with near-native performance, right? I wonder if they take advantage of those features (actually I forget exactly what the features were).

I mean this is an incredible achievement either way. Everything is emulated, but they are still running AAA games. Wow.

By @anotherhue - 4 months
Incredible work. May I also interest you in retrowin32 https://github.com/evmar/retrowin32/blob/main/README.md

Which is an attempt to collapse the stack so that fewer translation and virtualisation stages are needed.

By @mikhael28 - 4 months
Fantastic! A great proof of concept on Linux - lots of AAA gaming is already possible on Mac with Crossover and/or Parallels or VMWare Personal, which is free! While I have a Steam Deck, gaming on Mac works for me - I refuse to play Baldurs Gate 3 on a controller.
By @amoss - 4 months
I'm slightly confused after reading about page alignment. Why would a 16k page be less aligned than a 4k page causing assumptions about pointers within those pages to break? The 4k pages on x86 are aligned on 4k boundaries, are the 16k pages on M1 aligned on <4k boundaries?
By @joelthelion - 4 months
Realisticly speaking, is Asahi Linux usable right now for a random schmuck who just wants to use his computer?
By @lynguist - 4 months
May I use this space to ask the question: is the M3 substantially different from the M1 and M2 that it is not supported?
By @ZiiS - 4 months
For people like me who have been using Ashai for a while but are not Fedora natives; TIL `sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=40; sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot` is necessary first as the normal upgrades left me on 39.
By @andrewmcwatters - 4 months
I think at the moment, this is probably the only way to feasibly game on a Mac. Crossover and other Wine-based apps as well as Parallels are... not really truly possible. If you bought the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro 16-inch, 2021 with M1 Max and tried to play anything reasonably modern on it, you'd find the performance is basically not playable .
By @Thaxll - 4 months
I see that they're using FEX, what about box86? Is it comparable in term of performance?
By @MBCook - 4 months
I think my favorite little bit from the article is that they’re using a VM to “fix“ the page size differences between macOS and Windows.

What an ingenious idea.

By @freddydumont - 4 months
I’d be curious to know how it compares to gaming on macOS with Game porting toolkit.
By @macrolime - 4 months
Does this mean we're closer to getting GPU support on Docker on Apple devices?
By @psanford - 4 months
I'm a little sad that this has seemingly taken precedence over all other hardware support. M3 support, dp-alt mode, making the microphone work are all things that I was hoping were going to land in the past year.
By @WorldPeas - 4 months
all I need is DP alt mode and I'm switching!
By @Balvarez - 4 months
Nice so is this full Linux possibly running on an iPad, or just desk top?
By @whimsicalism - 4 months
Wish NixOS (or at least Arch) were supported on the level that Fedora is
By @qkhhly - 4 months
can i play black myth wukong with it?
By @jayd16 - 4 months
This makes me think of the classic clip of George Carlin telling a joke about the difference between heaven and hell [1].

Is there a modern equivalent with FAANG, Microsoft, Sony, Valve, etc.?

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR8xPC4NEro

By @hentrep - 4 months
I noticed the URL was updated for this post. Previously it linked to asahilinux.org which showed an anti-HN manifesto from the HN referral. Curious as I haven’t seen this before. Seems it has been covered by previous commenters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36227103
By @xbar - 4 months
Thank you

    Alyssa Rosenzweig
    Asahi Lina
    chaos_princess
    Davide Cavalca
    Dougall Johnson
    Ella Stanforth
    Faith Ekstrand
    Janne Grunau
    Karol Herbst
    marcan
    Mary Guillemard
    Neal Gompa
    Sergio López
    TellowKrinkle
    Teoh Han Hui
    Rob Clark
    Ryan Houdek
By @gertop - 4 months
Marcan and asahi Lina are the same person.
By @fl0id - 4 months
Yeah yeah great, now please m3 support, or maybe before that support for internal mic and external displays/dp-alt. Pretty please? (Not complaining happy about any progress)
By @nxobject - 4 months
If only I had "canapplesiliconemulatewindowsgames.com"!
By @dancemethis - 4 months
Where's the real inspiration for Asahi, Fandaniel in FFXIV?
By @sylware - 4 months
I still wonder why valve is that much reluctant at porting its proton stuff into the simple and plain C99 of wine/vkd3d.
By @paulryanrogers - 4 months
It is shocking the effort required to have a good gaming experience on Apple computers (excluding iOS). They always struck me as agnostic to games, yet in recent years it appears to border on open hostility.
By @wly_cdgr - 4 months
Ok, but why would a hardcore Linux person want to play games that embody everything they hate about Windows in their mode of production, data gathering practices, politics, etc?