"Correctness comes before performance." Next, performance will improve. Fedora Asahi Remix brings Windows PC gaming on Apple silicon Macs

Apple Macs are not as popular as PCs due to the smaller selection of Mac compatible games. One software aims to change that by combining emulators and application translations into a single OS called Fedora Ashahi Remix. It's Linux Jim, but it's not as you know.

Alyssa Rosezweig, one of the developers, has been regularly reporting on the project on her blog. The latest entry explains how Fedora Ashahi Remix lets you play Windows-based games such as Control and Fallout 4, Cyberpunk2077, and Witcher 3 on any Apple Mac with the M1 chip.

Install the Linux distro. Enter upgrade --refresh and reboot at the command prompt. Then, follow up with install steam.

The developers faced a much more difficult task. Apple M1 chips are fundamentally Arm-based as far as architecture is concerned, so FAR uses FEX Emu to run x86 binary code (i.e. It also uses Wine to translate Windows commands into Linux, and DXVK/vkd3d-proton to convert instructions for DirectX into ones for Vulkan. It also uses Wine for translating Windows commands into Linux, and DXVK/vkd3dproton for converting instructions for DirectX to ones for Vulkan.

Rosenzweig explains the biggest hurdle that was faced by the project: "Operating Systems allocate memory in fixed-size pages. If an application expects a smaller page than the system, it will break because of insufficient alignment. This is a problem. x86 expects pages of 4K, but Apple systems use pages of 16K.

The solution was brilliant: the main Linux OS uses 16K, but runs a virtual Linux kernel that uses 4K pages. The games are then run on the virtual Linux kernel. This includes all the hardware calls that the game makes. However, since the main Linux kernel emulates this, the Apple hardware has no idea.

I know that you think this can't possibly be super-fast. Rosenzweig admits the latest AAA games do not run at 60 frames per second yet, but this is because the primary goal of project is to make it as widely compatible as possible. "Correctness is first." Performance improves next," says Rosenzweig.

Fedora Ashahi Remix doesn't just focus on gaming. The project is working to include the most x86 emulation possible.

It's important to note that the virtual machine allows emulated applications to utilize up to 80% the system's RAM. This can be set to a lower value, but it means that if you have an Apple M1 Mac with only 8 GB of memory, there could be problems. You should aim for 16 GB of RAM or more.

The Steam Deck has proven that it is possible to run Windows games on Linux, even though the x86 platform has an advantage. The team behind FAR deserves a lot of credit for making this work on Arm-based hardware.

The real question is if this can be transferred to laptops with Qualcomm's Snapdragon-X processors. Windows on Arm is used by such PCs to run native x86 apps on the Arm-based processor. However, for games it's not a great solution and FAR might be better.

It's also a sign of the future, when gaming PCs will be shipped with Linux distributions that can run any Windows-based application or game. Many PCs have incredibly powerful CPUs and massive amounts of RAM, but they are underutilized when it comes to games. It's the GPU that does all the hard work.

If it ever happens, I'll be first in line for that operating system.