A few years ago, the idea of running PC games on a Mac, Linux, or Arm processor would have been laughable. But the developers behind Asahi Linux, an independent project that runs Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, have managed to do all three at once.
This feat brings together a perfect storm of open source projects, according to Asahi Linux GPU Lead Alyssa Rosenzweig. A FEX project to convert x86 CPU code to Arm, a Wine project to enable running Windows binaries on Linux, a DXVK, and a Proton project to translate. DirectX 12 API calls Vulkan API calls. Of course, it also calls the Asahi project’s Vulkan-compliant drivers for Apple graphics hardware.
Because Apple Silicon and x86 systems address memory differently, games technically run inside a virtual machine. Apple’s systems use 16 KB memory pages, while x86 systems use 4 KB pages. This causes problems with Asahi and other Arm Linux distributions. Regular stuff and the gap that VMs fill.
In Rosenzweig’s post, control, fallout 4, witcher 3, ghost runner, cyberpunk 2077, portal 2and hollow knightHowever, as she points out, most of these games still don’t run near 60 frames per second.