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How likely is this to make some kind of stride in the macOS gaming world? Perhaps some kind of "headless" Linux VM that functions similar to parallels or wine t

How likely is this to make some kind of stride in the macOS gaming world? Perhaps some kind of "headless" Linux VM that functions similar to parallels or wine that can essentially then run a proton layer to bring macOS up to par with Linux gaming. Can someone with more knowledge than me explain if that is feasible in the coming months/years?

sofixa 4y ago
I don't think that's at all the goal or even vague direction of the Asahi Linux project. It's to replace macOS, not to run as a VM within it. It's already possible to do what you want, with Parallels and any modern arm64 Linux distro, as long as the games are compiled for arm64 / you're willing to take the performance hit of emulation.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Not really macos gaming but it could be a bit thing for macbook gaming. My only laptop is a macbook and its powerful enough to run many of the games I play but they only run on windows/linux.
whywouldyoudo 4y ago
> How likely is this to make some kind of stride in the macOS gaming world? It doesn't make any strides unfortunately. > Perhaps some kind of "headless" Linux VM Linux narrowly supports the Steam Deck's goals. It doesn't make sense to use on a device like a Mac. > Can someone with more knowledge than me explain if that is feasible in the coming months/years? An end user is best served by Parallels. Overall, it doesn't make sense to run Windows-only games on a Mac.
smoldesu 4y ago
You might see a few games like Diablo 2 or DOOM running, but modern games are almost totally out of the question. The biggest roadblock is getting a complete Vulkan driver, which is at least a few years off. That would allow for DXVK to run, which enables the majority of Proton titles. And then there's the issue of the stack itself. It's hard enough getting Wine and DXVK to run on hardware designed to run Windows/DirectX respectively, but running it through Rosetta/Box86, on Asahi, using half-finished video drivers, is probably not great for stability. Just my $0.02. Edit: I thought you were talking about Asahi gaming. The state of Proton on MacOS is hopeless (Valve devs abandoned it after the Catalina announcement), but you can definitely run it in a VM if you're so-inclined. Wouldn't necessarily be any faster than using Windows in a VM, but it's still an option.
- MayeulC 4y ago
  Box86, Box64, or FEX-Emu. The latter is quite promising.
tmdh 4y ago
Well, this could be done this way, 1. A Linux VM which has steam installed on it. 2. A project like virglrenderer[1] for macOS and which processes Vulkan commands from the VM with virtio-gpu and sends data back. (I don't exactly know how it's done.) This would allow games on the Linux VM's steam run at near-native GPU performance. On the CPU side, there still a need for instruction emulation like QEMU. Or, Apple posted somewhere that you can run x86_64 Linux binaries inside the VM with the help of Rosetta. or an ARM64 Linux VM with Steam running via FEX-Emu. [1]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/virgl/virglrenderer https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/virgl/virglrenderer
deleted 4y ago
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sofixa 4y ago

I don't think that's at all the goal or even vague direction of the Asahi Linux project. It's to replace macOS, not to run as a VM within it. It's already possible to do what you want, with Parallels and any modern arm64 Linux distro, as long as the games are compiled for arm64 / you're willing to take the performance hit of emulation.

Gigachad 4y ago
Not really macos gaming but it could be a bit thing for macbook gaming. My only laptop is a macbook and its powerful enough to run many of the games I play but they only run on windows/linux.

whywouldyoudo 4y ago

> How likely is this to make some kind of stride in the macOS gaming world? It doesn't make any strides unfortunately. > Perhaps some kind of "headless" Linux VM Linux narrowly supports the Steam Deck's goals. It doesn't make sense to use on a device like a Mac. > Can someone with more knowledge than me explain if that is feasible in the coming months/years? An end user is best served by Parallels. Overall, it doesn't make sense to run Windows-only games on a Mac.

smoldesu 4y ago

You might see a few games like Diablo 2 or DOOM running, but modern games are almost totally out of the question. The biggest roadblock is getting a complete Vulkan driver, which is at least a few years off. That would allow for DXVK to run, which enables the majority of Proton titles. And then there's the issue of the stack itself. It's hard enough getting Wine and DXVK to run on hardware designed to run Windows/DirectX respectively, but running it through Rosetta/Box86, on Asahi, using half-finished video drivers, is probably not great for stability. Just my $0.02. Edit: I thought you were talking about Asahi gaming. The state of Proton on MacOS is hopeless (Valve devs abandoned it after the Catalina announcement), but you can definitely run it in a VM if you're so-inclined. Wouldn't necessarily be any faster than using Windows in a VM, but it's still an option.

MayeulC 4y ago
Box86, Box64, or FEX-Emu. The latter is quite promising.

tmdh 4y ago

Well, this could be done this way, 1. A Linux VM which has steam installed on it. 2. A project like virglrenderer[1] for macOS and which processes Vulkan commands from the VM with virtio-gpu and sends data back. (I don't exactly know how it's done.) This would allow games on the Linux VM's steam run at near-native GPU performance. On the CPU side, there still a need for instruction emulation like QEMU. Or, Apple posted somewhere that you can run x86_64 Linux binaries inside the VM with the help of Rosetta. or an ARM64 Linux VM with Steam running via FEX-Emu. [1]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/virgl/virglrenderer https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/virgl/virglrenderer

deleted 4y ago

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