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Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

376 points| pimeys | 3 years ago |social.treehouse.systems | reply

96 comments

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[+] ah-|3 years ago|reply
It doesn't just run Minecraft, it now runs a smooth gpu accelerated GNOME desktop including things like Youtube videos: https://cdn.masto.host/sigmoidsocial/media_attachments/files...

This doesn't yet work out of the box but the next few months will be very exciting.

[+] solarkraft|3 years ago|reply
Man, that's so cool. When things became quiet around the GPU work and Alyssa said something along the lines of "we are very far away" I lost hope a bit. That hope is back!
[+] renewiltord|3 years ago|reply
These open-source GPU driver guys are sick! About two decades ago, I had a Via Unichrome integrated GPU and the OpenChrome project had me able to run games on Linux. It was sick. I played Unreal Tournament (which had a Linux version that worked better for me than on Windows), and I think at one point my introduction to open source was having to modify another game's source code so that it would allocate less GPU memory for a texture (the texture then kind of smeared over the rest of the screen, but it was for a UI element so the game was still playable).

Love to see there are people still doing that stuff today, especially since this stuff is probably more complex than then.

[+] matheusmoreira|3 years ago|reply
Yeah, I have massive respect for those developers. I wonder how they learned to do what they do. Adding Linux support for hardware is some kind of super power.
[+] MuffinFlavored|3 years ago|reply
> These open-source GPU driver guys are sick!

I believe it's guys + girls specifically for this project

edit: it might just be girls? Asahi Lina and Alyssa Rosenzweig?

[+] tpush|3 years ago|reply
Already using Asahi Linux on my M1 Air; can't wait until the GPU stuff lands!

Extremely impressive work by all involved!

[+] sebosp|3 years ago|reply
I struggle to understand their endurance on their live coding sessions, for example https://youtu.be/VYAT6NZUQUE I want to watch them carefully and slowly from the start, it's so good to see the development workflow, testing, etc, initially the music was a bit difficult for me but seeing such progress and knowledge is amazing, just amazing
[+] umanwizard|3 years ago|reply
What’s your battery life like compared to macOS?
[+] nextlevelwizard|3 years ago|reply
As a hobby or are you actually getting some benefits?
[+] wkdneidbwf|3 years ago|reply
this whole project has been amazing to watch develop. not only is this technically impressive, it seemed like it happened _so fast_. really talented people!
[+] phkahler|3 years ago|reply
And the Apple GPU kernel driver is written in Rust, so it kinda proves that concept as a side effect!
[+] DefineOutside|3 years ago|reply
This is impressive for 12 render distance (You can see this by D: [render distance] in F3). Lower resolution and looking upwards does help though. Also, minecraft does a draw call for every single text in F3 which significantly lowers FPS. This might be playable at 60 FPS with sodium (beats optifine in performance) and a lowered view distance.
[+] bil7|3 years ago|reply
absolutely insane development pace. Congrats to the asahi team
[+] astrostl|3 years ago|reply
I wonder if this would work on 32-bit systems? I had an old one and was surprised to see that Minecraft wouldn't run on it because of a video driver issue. It's odd to me to consider x86 hardware actual trash even when computationally capable of running something at a useful speed.
[+] rowanG077|3 years ago|reply
Totally awesome that this is now working. But performance seems relatively lackluster for now. But it's good they are focusing on getting it to work first before getting it fast.
[+] bayesian_horse|3 years ago|reply
Now we still need Minecraft to become open source.
[+] bombolo|3 years ago|reply
switch to minetest!

I'm told from long time minecraft players that it doesn't suffer the same data corruption issues as minecraft.

[+] 63|3 years ago|reply
The state of open source Minecraft is nuanced enough to be interesting. The Minecraft ip and codebases are currently owned by Microsoft and have technically always been closed source, but the nature of the game and its development history are such that third party mods and modding apis are very common. Because the original edition of the game is written in Java, it's relatively easy to decompile and develop for. In fact, Mojang Studios has been including a deobfuscation map with each snapshot release of the game for a few years now which would allow you to decompile the Java edition of the game and use the same names that they use internally [0]. Though, most modders prefer to use the mappings provided by modding apis like forge and fabric due to tradition and licensing conflicts. Depending on your definition of Minecraft, there's also plenty of open source implementations of Minecraft Classic, a much older version of the game that's easy to reimplement but apparently still has an active community [1]. Then of course there's Minetest, an independent totally open source voxel game that happens to have a lot in common with Minecraft [2].

I should probably also note that there's something of a conflict in this area surrounding the other edition of Minecraft, Bedrock Edition, which is written in C++ and therefore difficult to decompile and mod. Bedrock Edition is much more closed than Java edition in a number of ways, such as including a store built into the launcher for buying maps, texture packs and skins whereas these would need to retrieved externally (usually for free) on Java edition. However, Bedrock Edition does have a first party modding api, a more feature rich internal scripting system with the concept of "behavior packs" [3], and has led to the development of a number of tools used by mod authors for both editions, such as Blockbench [4]. Ultimately Java Edition and its community have the legacy of Notch and Mojang with a long history of community contribution while Bedrock Edition was only developed after the Microsoft acquisition and is much more in Microsoft's style.

EDIT: Turns out the Bedrock Edition modding api was discontinued earlier this year [5].

[0]https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Obfuscation_map [1]https://wiki.vg/Category:Minecraft_Classic [2]https://www.minetest.net/ [3]https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/minecraft/creator/document... [4]https://www.blockbench.net/ [5]https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/creator/article/removing-the...

[+] 55555|3 years ago|reply
If you choose to use Linux as your daily driver instead of MacOS, why? Just curious.
[+] nick_meister|3 years ago|reply
As someone who has a MBP M1 sitting there and barely used, I’m asking myself the same question, but targeted to MacOS users.
[+] pimeys|3 years ago|reply
Declarative setup with NixOS. I can choose what services and software gets run and installed. I can define my user experience (sway, tiling wm). I have the control on OS updates, not Apple. Native docker. CLI works much better on Linux compared to Apple; macOS command line tools feel limited and crippled compared to almost any Linux distribution.

And, of course, I can modify any of the tools I use. The whole stack is open source.

[+] smoldesu|3 years ago|reply
MacOS doesn't support the software I run (as of Catalina). Linux does, and as a bonus I get native Docker support.
[+] unknownaccount|3 years ago|reply
At 28 FPS…
[+] pdpi|3 years ago|reply
Yes, and at a really low resolution. That's okay, it's expected.

Make It Work, Make It Right, Make It Fast. I personally didn't expect Asahi would get this far on steps #1 and #2 nearly as quickly as they have. It's bloody impressive.

[+] smcl|3 years ago|reply
It's a start - remember this developer has basically bootstrapped linux on Apple's custom hardware and this is the early stages of the latest area she's focussed on (getting the GPU working). This has been an impressive project, it'll no doubt continue.
[+] xbar|3 years ago|reply
Which is pretty incredible in a day 1 driver. It's already playable. What a great year this team has had. Thanks Alyssa, Yuka, and Lina.
[+] sebirocs|3 years ago|reply
Just wait until they install optifine
[+] CameronNemo|3 years ago|reply
Better than no GPU driver and needing to spin the CPU for that work.
[+] thejosh|3 years ago|reply
wonder why much the macos version gets ootb?