Misc Horizon Linux — Running Switch Games Natively on ARM64 Linux
Joined Jan 8, 2016 Messages 6,026 Trophies 1 Location US Website mogbox.net XP 5,992 Country
Kinda surprised this hasn’t made its round here yet. Over at Reddit, u/kentjhall has announced a rather ambitious project. They’re patching the ARM64 Linux kernel in order to be able to play Switch games natively. So far, the first commercial game they’ve got running is Puyo Puyo Tetris. If this project gets further traction, this is going to be huge.
What?
Over the past while, I’ve worked on-and-off in my free time patching the arm64 Linux kernel to run Nintendo Switch games natively, i.e. by taking many of the Switch’s “Horizon” OS system calls and implementing their behavior using Linux’s existing facilities for memory management, scheduling, synchronization, etc.
Why?
Well my original thought was merely that I wanted to run Switch games on my MacBook—given that they’re powered by the same arm64 architecture, you should be able to run a Switch game’s machine code right on the CPU, no x86 translation layer needed. I was hoping to be able to achieve this entirely in user-space by attaching (via ptrace) to a process executing the Switch game’s code, and trapping any system calls to the tracer process. But if I recall, this quickly proved infeasible without OS support for various reasons to do with a Switch program’s use of system registers. If I’d have to poke around the OS anyway, I figured I might as well just handle everything within the kernel—then I’d just virtualize said OS under macOS.
Patching arm64 Linux means that you get Linux’s vast hardware driver support for free, so not only can it be virtualized on Apple silicon Macs, but it can run bare-metal on any arm64 hardware which supports Linux—even on lower-end hardware, given that there’s no need to emulate the CPU. This should offer a good deal of flexibility in the future for running Switch games, and hopefully will prove a useful option for game preservation.
Note that this is not an attempt to accurately recreate the Horizon OS, nor is it particularly intended to run on an actual Switch, as (I believe) is the case is for the Mesosphere project (though you probably could, I’m aware that the Switch can run Android at least). Rather, Horizon Linux is my attempt to enable Switch games to run on any arm64 hardware.
How?
In addition to OS support in handling Horizon system calls, a Switch program needs to be able to communicate with a number of system services that handle things like input, audio, graphics, etc. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I figured the easiest approach would be to take the open-source yuzu emulator and gut out the things I didn’t need (namely, kernel / CPU emulation), essentially keeping only the system services, GPU emulation, and app loader. This necessitated a custom system call interface to interface with kernel, and a custom Linux binary format for the loader to work with. I also decided (perhaps unnecessarily) to deviate from yuzu’s model and have each system service run persistently in it’s own thread, which made my reorganization considerably more involved.
The custom Linux kernel is called “Horizon Linux”, and the yuzu hack-job is called “mizu”. Mizu is intended to run as a systemd service under Horizon Linux.
Игра в высококлассные PC Игры на платах ARM Linux с Moonlight Embedded
Nvidia первой продемонстрировала запуск топовых компьютерных игр на игровой консоли Nvidia Project SHIELD на CES 2013, с тех пор проект Moonlight был создан, чтобы обеспечить проект с открытым исходным кодом, совместимый с Nvidia Gamestream, и поддерживающимся на Linux, Mac OS и Windows PC, мобильных устройствах Android и ОС IOS , а также Samsung VR. Так же была создана программа Moonlight Embedded предназначенный для платформ ARM Linux, таких как Raspberry Pi, ODROID, Cubox, и ODROID-C1 и C2-ODROID с поддержкой H.265 полученной совсем недавно, которая позволяет улучшить качество до H. 265 при заданной скорости передачи данных, и, возможно, 4K @ 60 Гц на игровой плате ODROID-C2 .
Вам понадобится игровой ПК с Windows с Nvidia GTX 600/700/900 GPU, проводным соединением или маршрутизатор высокого класса поддерживающий стандарт 802.11 или счарже, а так же Nvidia Geforce Experience (GFE) установленный на ваш ПК.
Потом вам нужно установить Moonlight Embedded на плате, следуя инструкциям Вики, включить Shield Streaming в настройках GFE, связать Moonlight Embedded с сервером GFE,который подключиться к серверу GFE с Moonlight Embedded и вы сможете начать наслаждаться играя в игры.
Если у вас нет платы то вы можете установить Moonlight для Android.
Благодарим сайт cnx-software.com за предоставленную информацию
Games
Apple Flinger Funny single- and multiplayer game for Android — Use a slingshot to shoot with apples. Very challenging and addictive.
available in 4 distros AUR Nix stable 22.11 Nix unstable openSUSE Tumbleweed game launcher Kirigami 5
BurgerParty A time management game for Android where you play a fast-food owner who must put together the burgers ordered by her customers before time runs out.
available in 19 distros Alpine edge Arch Linux ARM aarch64 Arch Linux ARM armv7h AUR Debian 11 Debian 12 Debian unstable Devuan 4.0 Fedora 38 Fedora rawhide Flathub Gentoo GNU Guix Manjaro stable Manjaro unstable Nix stable 22.11 Nix unstable openSUSE Tumbleweed PureOS landing game SDL2 1
available in 13 distros AUR Debian 11 Debian 12 Debian unstable Devuan 4.0 Flathub Gentoo GNU Guix Manjaro stable Manjaro unstable Nix stable 22.11 Nix unstable PureOS landing game SDL2 1
available in 21 distros Alpine 3.17 Alpine 3.18 Alpine edge Arch Linux ARM aarch64 Arch Linux ARM armv7h AUR Debian 11 Debian 12 Debian unstable Devuan 4.0 Fedora 38 Fedora rawhide Flathub Gentoo GNU Guix Manjaro stable Manjaro unstable Nix stable 22.11 Nix unstable openSUSE Tumbleweed PureOS landing educational game QtQuick 5
available in 19 distros Alpine 3.17 Alpine 3.18 Alpine edge Arch Linux ARM aarch64 Arch Linux ARM armv7h AUR Debian 11 Debian 12 Debian unstable Devuan 4.0 Fedora 38 Fedora rawhide Flathub Gentoo GNU Guix Manjaro stable Manjaro unstable openSUSE Tumbleweed PureOS landing game GTK3 5
available in 21 distros Alpine 3.17 Alpine 3.18 Alpine edge Arch Linux ARM aarch64 Arch Linux ARM armv7h AUR Debian 11 Debian 12 Debian unstable Devuan 4.0 Fedora 38 Fedora rawhide Flathub Gentoo GNU Guix Manjaro stable Manjaro unstable Nix stable 22.11 Nix unstable openSUSE Tumbleweed PureOS landing game GTK4 libadwaita 5
available in 20 distros Alpine 3.17 Alpine 3.18 Alpine edge Arch Linux ARM aarch64 Arch Linux ARM armv7h Debian 11 Debian 12 Debian unstable Devuan 4.0 Fedora 38 Fedora rawhide Flathub Gentoo GNU Guix Manjaro stable Manjaro unstable Nix stable 22.11 Nix unstable openSUSE Tumbleweed PureOS landing game GTK3 5
available in 19 distros Alpine 3.17 Alpine 3.18 Alpine edge Arch Linux ARM aarch64 Arch Linux ARM armv7h Debian 11 Debian 12 Debian unstable Devuan 4.0 Fedora 38 Fedora rawhide Gentoo GNU Guix Manjaro stable Manjaro unstable Nix stable 22.11 Nix unstable openSUSE Tumbleweed PureOS landing game 5
available in 8 distros Alpine edge AUR Flathub Gentoo GNU Guix Nix stable 22.11 Nix unstable openSUSE Tumbleweed game SDL2 1