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Box64 – Linux Userspace x86_64 Emulator Targeted at ARM64 Linux Devices

165 points by varbhat 4y ago

mogery 4y ago
oh hey! i worked on this a while back! really cool project. runs unity games too. author is a very talented guy
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > author is a very talented guy Almost an understatement, he's done amazing projects throughout the years: https://github.com/ptitSeb?tab=repositories https://github.com/ptitSeb?tab=repositories
SillyUsername 4y ago
Supports Vulkan... so an RPi 4 can run x64 Linux, emulating Wine64 (and Wine32), "emulating" DirectX games on Windows...
- ekianjo 4y ago
  It will work on a RPi4 but the limitations is going to be the quality of the Vulkan drivers, and the memory that can be allocated for graphics. Also, a Rpi4 is going to be massively underpowered to run most games in any way. A much better example is the Mini PC with a D2000 Phytium 8 cores ARM process from China, equipped with an AMD RX550 GPU - it can actually run Doom 2016 with Box86 and Box64: https://youtu.be/5JwflzpWDzk?t=614 https://youtu.be/5JwflzpWDzk?t=614
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - malermeister 4y ago
    That's a very generous definition of "run" - ~17fps.
- ThatPlayer 4y ago
  Vulkan drivers on the RPi are kinda terrible. Only supports Vulkan 1.0. For better compatibility, a Rockchip SoC with Mali GPU and Panfrost drivers support desktop OpenGL 3.1, so you can use Wine's WineD3D on that. https://mesamatrix.net/ https://mesamatrix.net/
sylware 4y ago
arm64 is not that interesting due the toxic IP tied to this ISA. Would be more interesting to target RISC-V.
- mort96 4y ago
  ARM64 is interesting because a ton of people have ARM64 hardware. In an ideal world we'd all be using RISC-V rather than either ARM64 or x86_64, but we're a long, long way away from that.
- klelatti 4y ago
  You keep repeating that the Arm isa has toxic or super-toxic IP. Are you implying that it can actively harm users of the Arm ISA or do you just object to anything with proprietary IP?
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  ARM64 is very interesting because some of the best laptop hardware in existence (best battery life, screens, etc.) use it.
  - skrowl 4y ago
    [dead]
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    ARM does indeed have benefits, but if the most notable ones to you are laptop hardware and screen quality then I'd argue that ARM doesn't really interest you at all.
  - maven29 4y ago
    Smartphones, tablets and ARM64 server deployments vastly outnumber these luxury segment consumer devices. There is a much better business case for x86 binary translation outside of a lineup of laptops relatively few people own (despite the crowd having formidable purchasing power)
- IOT_Apprentice 4y ago
tkiolp4 4y ago
Talking about emulation/VMs, I have recently played with multipass (from canonical) to run ubuntu VMs on my Apple M1. It works like a charm! In the past I have tried VMware and Vagrant, and while they somehow work, I’m always running into issues. More recently I tried qemu, and I spent many days trying to figure out the correct set of command line parameters to run linux. The bad thing about multipass is that it only runs Ubuntu VMs. The good thing (besides working out of the box) is that mutipass uses qemu behind the curtains, and as part of the logs multipass spits out, one can see the complete set of command line parameters that was used to spin up the VM (so that can be used as a blueprint to run other VMs besides Ubuntu)
- shoo_pl 4y ago
  Have you seen https://github.com/lima-vm/lima https://github.com/lima-vm/lima ? Runs linux VMs and can run x64 via quemu or even using rosetta2 & apple virtualization framework
  - dicknuckle 4y ago
    I've used that and can confirm it works great. I just use it to run Arm64 Linux on my M1 chip at work for speed.
- yonz 4y ago
  TIL Adroid Emulator is Qemu https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/2db80f7c1921a6f5d48b998378e3792e16c968a4/README.md https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/2d... It saddens me that so many of these open source projects barely get any monetary love.
- nousermane 4y ago
  > tried qemu, and spent many days trying to figure out the correct set of parameters It's really not that hard, once you get used to it. Or, if you rather not spend that precious time, there is a GUI tool that would configure those parameters for you: https://virt-manager.org/ https://virt-manager.org/ Bonus: once started with virt-manager, run "ps ax | grep qemu", et voila - you have your qemu parameters, ready to copy-paste, should you wish to run exact same VM later from a script, or something...
ekianjo 4y ago
Recent video here about what the latest update brings (Steam Full Picture Mode in action) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcck7ZTo4-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcck7ZTo4-8
parasti 4y ago
Slightly off-topic, but the author also made gl4es, a library that basically allows all kinds of OpenGL apps to run on modern devices. Shameless plug: gl4es is what allowed me to port Neverball to the browser. https://neverball.github.io https://neverball.github.io
- dicknuckle 4y ago
  What about GL2ES and GL3ES? I use them in Retroarch on my android TV box.
  - mort96 4y ago
    I don't think there's a GL2ES and GL3ES? Are you thinking about GLES 2 and GLES 3? Those are graphics APIs standardized by Khronos, being versions of OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES).
    - dicknuckle 4y ago
      Yep you're right, bad acronyms will forever confuse me.
- lunixbochs 4y ago
  > made gl4es Neverball was working in the original glshim project before ptitseb forked it to gl4es. (Not to discount the significant work he's put in since, including the ES2 backend)
  - parasti 4y ago
    My bad, I completely forgot they worked off of a fork. Did you ever try Neverball with glshim, though? Why? I'm the current maintainer of Neverball, always very interested in Neverball-related stuff. When I was working on the Emscripten port, I tried a bunch of GL-to-OpenGL ES libraries. There were a few. I might have tried glshim, but not sure anymore, that was a couple of years ago. gl4es was the only one that worked without any obvious visual glitches.
skrowl 4y ago
[dead]
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
How does performance for this compare with QEMU?
Aissen 4y ago
How does it compare to FEX ? Last time I looked it was the state of the (FOSS) art for this use case. https://fex-emu.com/ https://fex-emu.com/
- Aissen 4y ago
  Answering myself: https://box86.org/2022/03/box86-box64-vs-qemu-vs-fex-vs-rosetta2/ https://box86.org/2022/03/box86-box64-vs-qemu-vs-fex-vs-rose... and the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32149080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32149080

165 points by varbhat 4y ago

mogery 4y ago

oh hey! i worked on this a while back! really cool project. runs unity games too. author is a very talented guy

ekianjo 4y ago
> author is a very talented guy Almost an understatement, he's done amazing projects throughout the years: https://github.com/ptitSeb?tab=repositories https://github.com/ptitSeb?tab=repositories

SillyUsername 4y ago

Supports Vulkan... so an RPi 4 can run x64 Linux, emulating Wine64 (and Wine32), "emulating" DirectX games on Windows...

ekianjo 4y ago
It will work on a RPi4 but the limitations is going to be the quality of the Vulkan drivers, and the memory that can be allocated for graphics. Also, a Rpi4 is going to be massively underpowered to run most games in any way. A much better example is the Mini PC with a D2000 Phytium 8 cores ARM process from China, equipped with an AMD RX550 GPU - it can actually run Doom 2016 with Box86 and Box64: https://youtu.be/5JwflzpWDzk?t=614 https://youtu.be/5JwflzpWDzk?t=614
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- malermeister 4y ago
  That's a very generous definition of "run" - ~17fps.
ThatPlayer 4y ago
Vulkan drivers on the RPi are kinda terrible. Only supports Vulkan 1.0. For better compatibility, a Rockchip SoC with Mali GPU and Panfrost drivers support desktop OpenGL 3.1, so you can use Wine's WineD3D on that. https://mesamatrix.net/ https://mesamatrix.net/

sylware 4y ago

arm64 is not that interesting due the toxic IP tied to this ISA. Would be more interesting to target RISC-V.

mort96 4y ago
ARM64 is interesting because a ton of people have ARM64 hardware. In an ideal world we'd all be using RISC-V rather than either ARM64 or x86_64, but we're a long, long way away from that.
klelatti 4y ago
You keep repeating that the Arm isa has toxic or super-toxic IP. Are you implying that it can actively harm users of the Arm ISA or do you just object to anything with proprietary IP?
qbasic_forever 4y ago
ARM64 is very interesting because some of the best laptop hardware in existence (best battery life, screens, etc.) use it.
- skrowl 4y ago
  [dead]
- smoldesu 4y ago
  ARM does indeed have benefits, but if the most notable ones to you are laptop hardware and screen quality then I'd argue that ARM doesn't really interest you at all.
- maven29 4y ago
  Smartphones, tablets and ARM64 server deployments vastly outnumber these luxury segment consumer devices. There is a much better business case for x86 binary translation outside of a lineup of laptops relatively few people own (despite the crowd having formidable purchasing power)
IOT_Apprentice 4y ago

tkiolp4 4y ago

Talking about emulation/VMs, I have recently played with multipass (from canonical) to run ubuntu VMs on my Apple M1. It works like a charm! In the past I have tried VMware and Vagrant, and while they somehow work, I’m always running into issues. More recently I tried qemu, and I spent many days trying to figure out the correct set of command line parameters to run linux. The bad thing about multipass is that it only runs Ubuntu VMs. The good thing (besides working out of the box) is that mutipass uses qemu behind the curtains, and as part of the logs multipass spits out, one can see the complete set of command line parameters that was used to spin up the VM (so that can be used as a blueprint to run other VMs besides Ubuntu)

shoo_pl 4y ago
Have you seen https://github.com/lima-vm/lima https://github.com/lima-vm/lima ? Runs linux VMs and can run x64 via quemu or even using rosetta2 & apple virtualization framework
- dicknuckle 4y ago
  I've used that and can confirm it works great. I just use it to run Arm64 Linux on my M1 chip at work for speed.
yonz 4y ago
TIL Adroid Emulator is Qemu https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/2db80f7c1921a6f5d48b998378e3792e16c968a4/README.md https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/2d... It saddens me that so many of these open source projects barely get any monetary love.
nousermane 4y ago
> tried qemu, and spent many days trying to figure out the correct set of parameters It's really not that hard, once you get used to it. Or, if you rather not spend that precious time, there is a GUI tool that would configure those parameters for you: https://virt-manager.org/ https://virt-manager.org/ Bonus: once started with virt-manager, run "ps ax | grep qemu", et voila - you have your qemu parameters, ready to copy-paste, should you wish to run exact same VM later from a script, or something...

ekianjo 4y ago

Recent video here about what the latest update brings (Steam Full Picture Mode in action) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcck7ZTo4-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcck7ZTo4-8

parasti 4y ago

Slightly off-topic, but the author also made gl4es, a library that basically allows all kinds of OpenGL apps to run on modern devices. Shameless plug: gl4es is what allowed me to port Neverball to the browser. https://neverball.github.io https://neverball.github.io

dicknuckle 4y ago
What about GL2ES and GL3ES? I use them in Retroarch on my android TV box.
- mort96 4y ago
  I don't think there's a GL2ES and GL3ES? Are you thinking about GLES 2 and GLES 3? Those are graphics APIs standardized by Khronos, being versions of OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES).
  - dicknuckle 4y ago
    Yep you're right, bad acronyms will forever confuse me.
lunixbochs 4y ago
> made gl4es Neverball was working in the original glshim project before ptitseb forked it to gl4es. (Not to discount the significant work he's put in since, including the ES2 backend)
- parasti 4y ago
  My bad, I completely forgot they worked off of a fork. Did you ever try Neverball with glshim, though? Why? I'm the current maintainer of Neverball, always very interested in Neverball-related stuff. When I was working on the Emscripten port, I tried a bunch of GL-to-OpenGL ES libraries. There were a few. I might have tried glshim, but not sure anymore, that was a couple of years ago. gl4es was the only one that worked without any obvious visual glitches.

skrowl 4y ago

[dead]

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

How does performance for this compare with QEMU?

Aissen 4y ago

How does it compare to FEX ? Last time I looked it was the state of the (FOSS) art for this use case. https://fex-emu.com/ https://fex-emu.com/

Aissen 4y ago
Answering myself: https://box86.org/2022/03/box86-box64-vs-qemu-vs-fex-vs-rosetta2/ https://box86.org/2022/03/box86-box64-vs-qemu-vs-fex-vs-rose... and the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32149080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32149080