@neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Cat's out of the bag:
FEX, an emulator I've been working on these past 4 years, is going to be part of the Steam Frame to bring x86 Windows games to an ARM Linux VR headset! 😊

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmKrKTwtukE&t=205s

Really happy to have been part of the journey and of the team that got FEX to where it is today. Can't wait for the release and community reception!

#steamframe

883

47

424

1

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 4mo ago

RE: @LAS@floss.social

Heimspiel this Saturday in Berlin: I'm once again speaking about x86-on-ARM emulation!

Can't wait to find out in which hilarious way my demo will fail this time 😄

https://conf.linuxappsummit.org/event/9/contributions/223/

floss.social

18

1

7

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 4mo ago

I'll be in Karlsruhe for my first #GPN24 later this week!

Feel free to send me a DM if you want to meet up :)

mastodon.social

7

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 6mo ago

💡 moment: You can replace #distrobox with a simple " #nix develop" for SDK and toolchain containers. Instant shell access to the OCI image without requiring Docker/Podman itself!

Why bother? It's easy to lose track of all the containers on your system. With Nix, an unused image is just one more artifact that automatically gets cleaned up when no longer needed.

How?
Read the juicy details below 🧵, or see https://gist.github.com/neobrain/71b2c17f037893db7464be1019b65dc1 for the full implementation :)

[1/5]

mastodon.social

5

1

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 6mo ago

PSA: #Firefox 149 ships a new default style for its private browsing homepage, so the "I don't want change" feels are strong right now.

I'm sure they'll iterate over the hilarious 17px border, but for now you can disable the whole thing by toggling browser.privatebrowsing.felt-privacy-v1 back to false :)

mastodon.social

Mastodon

5

2

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@jrt@infosec.exchange Oops, reminds me that I still have slides to write 🙈

7

1

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@catilac@infosec.exchange @sableraph@genart.social oh hey you, looking fresh today 👀

1

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@sven I already meant to say hi at 39c3, maybe I'll catch you this time :) PS: Will there be Asahi stickers? 😇

2

1

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@ari@fedi.arimelody.space @breakin@mastodon.gamedev.place Cool that you got set up so easily! Some other settings to play around with are disabling TSO and enabling x87 reduced precision. Library forwarding indeed should also offer a decent speedup though.

3

14

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 24mo ago

Replying to

@noybeu@mastodon.social The ending paragraphs are misleading. The feature is *also* disabled if telemetry is enabled, and possibly doesn't actually do anything yet: https://mastodon.social/@jamesh@aus.social/112834742534943109

mastodon.social

13

2

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@janelith@hol.ogra.ph Thanks for the kind words :)

3

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@kde@floss.social ... but does it have wobbly windows? 🥺

2

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@ari@fedi.arimelody.space Sounds like an installation issue with the wrapper libraries. Perhaps you can give the nix instructions on the wiki a try instead? https://wiki.fex-emu.com/index.php/Development:Setting_up_Library_Forwarding#Generic_Nix_fallback (Vulkan probably didn't cause any issues because you didn't test any 32-bit title that use it)

wiki.fex-emu.com

Development:Setting up Library Forwarding - FEX-Emu Wiki

2

1

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@ari@fedi.arimelody.space You can force software rendering with the envvar LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1. Mangohud would normally display llvmpipe if that were the case, so I think the GPU usage reading is just broken.

I could be wrong though!

1

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@ari@fedi.arimelody.space So it's running slower than without forwarding GL? That's very curious, and so is the need for the GL version override (why would it not be needed with the driver from our RootFS?)

1

6

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@ari@fedi.arimelody.space Is our RootFS actually bundling rpi GL drivers at all? If not, is it perhaps using zink? Two things two check. I don't know the filename of the rpi GL driver, and it'd be interesting to see if forcing use of zink on the host side helps :) (Also mangohud could be used to tell for sure which driver it's using without library forwarding!)

1

4

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@ari@fedi.arimelody.space The build steps are unchanged and running the cmake_enable_libfwd.sh script already sets up CMake appropriately. You shoud just need ninja && ninja install.

From your command description it sounds like you're missing half the libraries (the -host ones specifically).

Enabling GL&Vulkan should be safe and good enough. You can also try something simpler like vkcube or glxgears (from the FEX RootFS) for a more convenient test case.

1

9

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@ari@fedi.arimelody.space Fun stuff! So you also tried libGL forwarding with MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=zink, but it didn't run faster than the default experience that uses guest-zink? (Honestly not sure how the latter even works - we're neither shipping an rpi Vulkan driver in the RootFS after all)

For what it's worth, Penny's Big Breakaway is a good testing title (demo on Steam) where libvulkan forwarding makes the world of a difference for me.

0

2

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@mawkler@fosstodon.org I've used it in the past - sadly its device pairing broke in seemingly random intervals for me, which then required a repair and manual restore of the settings. Really put a dent on the otherwise seamless experience! It's been a while that I last used it though, maybe time to try it again?

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@catilac@infosec.exchange @sableraph@genart.social I'm guessing you did consider matrix? :) It has been rapidly improving these last 2-3 years to the point I'd have no second thoughts about opening up new communities there instead of Discord, especially when if you recommend the happy path (Element client + matrix.org homeserver). Interested to hear any concerns though! (DM if you don't want to invite drive-by comments)

0

2

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@cas@social.treehouse.systems @verdre@mastodon.social So cool! Now I really regret that I couldn't make it for last BTO 😅 So this is a proper reimpl of the Android APIs without containers? I'm guessing the practical advantage is reduced RAM/disk use and better startup time? Perhaps better Phosh/shell integration as well?

0

5

0

Tony Wasserka @neobrain@mastodon.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@cas@social.treehouse.systems @verdre@mastodon.social Ah! What makes it nicer than Waydroid? Just more polish courtesy of being part of a commercial product? Naively I would've expected any container approach to be more or less the same, but little do I know :)

0

3

0