[HN Gopher] Box64 - Linux Userspace x86_64 Emulator Targeted at ...
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Box64 - Linux Userspace x86_64 Emulator Targeted at ARM64 Linux
Devices
Author : varbhat
Score : 142 points
Date : 2023-03-11 11:27 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| Aissen wrote:
| 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/
| SillyUsername wrote:
| Supports Vulkan... so an RPi 4 can run x64 Linux, emulating
| Wine64 (and Wine32), "emulating" DirectX games on Windows...
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| 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/
| ekianjo wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| sylware wrote:
| arm64 is not that interesting due the toxic IP tied to this ISA.
| Would be more interesting to target RISC-V.
| klelatti wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| ARM64 is very interesting because some of the best laptop
| hardware in existence (best battery life, screens, etc.) use
| it.
| skrowl wrote:
| [dead]
| maven29 wrote:
| 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)
| smoldesu wrote:
| 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.
| mort96 wrote:
| 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.
| teilo wrote:
| RISC-V may become the open source ARM, or it may be a complete
| bust. At this point, either could happen. As it is now, there
| are only a few hardware implementations and all of them are dog
| slow compared to ARM.
| snvzz wrote:
| With RISC-V having shipped billions of cores in 2022, the
| latter is unlikely.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| RISC-V has a minimal installed based and ARM64 doesn't.
| Therefore the potential number of users positively impacted by
| further development is larger.
| snvzz wrote:
| Fortunately, the author seems to care[0].
|
| 0. https://forum.rvspace.org/t/work-on-risc-v-dynarec-for-
| box64...
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| 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)
| rcarmo wrote:
| It uses _parts_ of QEMU, but not the whole thing.
| yonz wrote:
| TIL Adroid Emulator is Qemu
|
| https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/qemu/+/2d...
|
| It saddens me that so many of these open source projects barely
| get any monetary love.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| One issue with those "shortcuts" is that you'll end up with
| crazy arg strings consisting of 20+ cryptic parameters.
|
| qemu actually has sane defaults, so it's not that hard to
| launch a VM, if you don't need all fancy features (chances you
| don't).
|
| I'm not sure if it's really worth it to spend time reading qemu
| manuals. I did it and I'm using shell scripts to start VMs
| which is easier for me than learning another qemu wrapper. And
| I know that I'm using bare minimum which I like.
| jweir wrote:
| We migrated from Vagrant/VirtualBox to Mutlipass and Mutagen.io
| for file sync. The only thing I miss is the private networking
| options of VirtualBox. So we pull the ip from Multipass and put
| it in etc/hosts for name registration.
| nousermane wrote:
| > 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/
|
| 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...
| moondev wrote:
| Does virt-manager run on aarch64 macOS? I thought it needed
| libvirtd.
| shoo_pl wrote:
| Have you seen https://github.com/lima-vm/lima ?
|
| Runs linux VMs and can run x64 via quemu or even using rosetta2
| & apple virtualization framework
| dicknuckle wrote:
| 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.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Talking about emulation/VMs,
|
| Box86 / Box64 is however not emulation or VM. It translates X86
| and X86_64 cpu code to ARM code. If anything it's very close to
| what Rosetta2 does on Mac.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Recent video here about what the latest update brings (Steam Full
| Picture Mode in action)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcck7ZTo4-8
| mogery wrote:
| oh hey! i worked on this a while back!
|
| really cool project. runs unity games too. author is a very
| talented guy
| ekianjo wrote:
| > author is a very talented guy
|
| Almost an understatement, he's done amazing projects throughout
| the years:
|
| https://github.com/ptitSeb?tab=repositories
| skrowl wrote:
| [dead]
| parasti wrote:
| 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
| dicknuckle wrote:
| What about GL2ES and GL3ES? I use them in Retroarch on my
| android TV box.
| mort96 wrote:
| 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).
| lunixbochs wrote:
| > 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)
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| How does performance for this compare with QEMU?
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(page generated 2023-03-11 23:00 UTC)