startergo/README.en.md

## README.en.md

      
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              README.en.md
            
          
    Linux Desktop on Apple Silicon in Practice

I bought M1 MacBook Air. It is the fastest computer I have, and I have been a
GNOME/GNU/Linux user for long time. It is obvious conclusion that I need
practical Linux desktop environment on Apple
Silicon.
Fortunately, Linux already works on Apple Silicon/M1. But how practical is it?

Two native ports exist.

Corellium. It is obsolete. https://corellium.com/blog/linux-m1
Asahi Linux. It is greatly improving and may be usable for certain
workloads, but it lacks e.g. graphics acceleration for now.
https://asahilinux.org


QEMU can run code on CPU natively. But what about GPU? Unfortunately, QEMU is
also not optimized
so much for macOS.

As I needed Linux desktop right now, I decided to hack QEMU. The most difficult
challenge is obviously accelerated graphics, but there is Virgil 3D; a bridge to
expose host OpenGL to the guest.
https://virgil3d.github.io
It unfortunately didn't work on macOS host.
So I just made it work. That's it. Here is a video demonstrating OpenGL on
Linux on Apple Silicon/M1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0bVlVQU2JQ&list=PLesZxBYUPr3wdU3sONUv4Q7UDOg1Dn_Ue&index=4
Modifications

QEMU

ui/cocoa


Added OpenGL support.
Enforced pixel by pixel display.
Added cursor composition.
Improved key mappings (e.g. Japanese IME keys, 2021-06-17)

hw/block


File locking on macOS is fixed. (2021-07-07, Add file.locking=on to drive
to prevent drive breakage in case you concurrently launch the same virtual
machine by mistake.)

coreaudio


Fix device change (2022-02-26)

Virgil 3D renderer

Improved OpenGL ES support.
Do It Yourself

Setup

1. Open a terminal.
2. Install GLib, Meson, Pixman, pkg-config and spice-protocol with Homebrew.
brew install glib meson pixman pkg-config spice-protocol
3. Make a empty directory and change the working directory to it.
4. For Arm:
curl -L https://gist.github.com/startergo/0d9a7425876c2b42f8b797af80fbe3d8/raw/754e9b66baa82f89ffde89e864b41479f162b280/run-arm.sh | bash -
For x64_86:
curl -L https://gist.github.com/startergo/0d9a7425876c2b42f8b797af80fbe3d8/raw/754e9b66baa82f89ffde89e864b41479f162b280/run-x86_64.sh | bash -
5.
bin/qemu-img create var/virtio.raw 64G
It doesn't consume the physical space until it has data, so you can make the
image very large. However, you will see odd behavior if you try to write data
more than the physical disk allows.
6.
curl -LO https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/releases/39/respins/Silverblue/aarch64/Fedora-Silverblue-ostree-x64-39-1.5-respin.iso
8.
./run -cdrom Fedora-Silverblue-ostree-x64-39-1.5-respin.iso
Proceed the installation process, and now you can run Fedora by executing ./run.
Note: you won't get keyboard to work before Linux boots because TianoCore, the UEFI firmware does not support virtio-keyboard used in this configuration.
Updating

Just download the latest run.sh and execute it in your workspace directory.
Choosing OpenGL profile

Edit run.

gl=off will disable Virgil 3D GPU. Most stable but laggy.
gl=core will enable OpenGL.framework. Unstable.
gl=es will enable ANGLE. Stable and fast.

Upstreaming

Upstreaming is in progress. Hopefully the features I implemented will work just
by running brew install qemu in the future.

Epoxy: anholt/libepoxy#239
QEMU: https://patchew.org/search?q=project%3AQEMU+from%3Aakihiko.odaki%40gmail.com
Virgil 3D renderer: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/virgl/virglrenderer/-/merge_requests?scope=all&utf8=✓&state=all&author_username=akihiko.odaki

Some insights

QEMU

This QEMU modification is not secure. The graphics acceleration code lives
in the same process with everything else of the virtual machine and it is
huge; the graphics stack involves LLVM for shader compilation, and a simple
bug in the stack can lead to complete takeover of the guest.
vhost-user-gpu provides graphics acceleration isolation, but it needs
modifications to run outside Linux because:

historically, vhost-user is a re-implementation of Linux kernel's vhost
interface, and it relies on kernel headers for interface definitions and
vhost-user uses eventfd which is only available on Linux.

It shouldn't be difficult, but I'm satisfied even without process isolation so I
don't. The graphics acceleration process would be still shared and it would
remain possible that one graphical process exploit leads to disclosure of the
entire graphics output anyway.
Linux desktop on Apple Silicon/M1 in general

As I described here, such a virtualization software is practical and efficient
approach to run Linux desktop. The performance overhead is also acceptable for
daily use, and it even provides better integration of Linux and macOS. For
example, you can switch macOS and Linux with three-finger gesture on trackpad.
You can use VirtFS.
However, there are complexities that such a virtualization adds. It basically
means sharing one hardware with two systems, so you have to allocate the
resource properly or it ends up with bad user experience. The allocation problem
happens everywhere (HID like keyboard, computing resource like CPU, power
management, etc.). This approach is efficient but not the best.
In long term, native Linux port is the best option. Asahi Linux is promising and
you may find it favorable than my modified QEMU for your use case even today.

  
## run-arm.sh
set -eux
mkdir -p depot_tools build/qemu source/angle source/libepoxy source/virglrenderer source/qemu var
git -C depot_tools init
git -C depot_tools fetch https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools 5400d9ef5a9e1b22fc846eca81d5a27df02d838a
git -C depot_tools checkout FETCH_HEAD
git -C source/angle init
git -C source/angle fetch https://chromium.googlesource.com/angle/angle f9bad5e27d61e2ab6a7504b1793be5aa14eb1414
git -C source/angle checkout FETCH_HEAD
git -C source/libepoxy init
git -C source/libepoxy fetch https://github.com/startergo/libepoxy.git macos
git -C source/libepoxy checkout FETCH_HEAD
git -C source/virglrenderer init
git -C source/virglrenderer fetch https://github.com/akihikodaki/virglrenderer.git macos
git -C source/virglrenderer checkout FETCH_HEAD
git -C source/qemu init
git -C source/qemu fetch https://github.com/akihikodaki/qemu.git macos
git -C source/qemu checkout FETCH_HEAD
export DEPOT_TOOLS_UPDATE=0
export PATH="$PWD/depot_tools:$PATH"
cd source/angle
scripts/bootstrap.py
gclient sync -D
gn gen --args=is_debug=false ../../build/angle
cd ../..
ninja -C build/angle
[ -e build/libepoxy/meson-info ] || meson setup "-Dc_args=-I$PWD/source/angle/include" -Degl=yes -Dx11=false "--prefix=$PWD" build/libepoxy source/libepoxy
meson install -C build/libepoxy
[ -e build/virglrenderer/meson-info ] || meson setup "-Dc_args=-I$PWD/source/angle/include" "--pkg-config-path=$PWD/lib/pkgconfig" "--prefix=$PWD" build/virglrenderer source/virglrenderer
meson install -C build/virglrenderer
cd build/qemu
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PWD/../../lib/pkgconfig" ../../source/qemu/configure "--extra-cflags=-I$PWD/../../source/angle/include" "--extra-ldflags=-L$PWD/../angle" "--prefix=$PWD/../.."
meson setup --reconfigure ../../source/qemu
meson install
[ -e ../../var/edk2-arm-vars.fd.bz2 ] || cp ../../source/qemu/pc-bios/edk2-arm-vars.fd.bz2 ../../var && bzip2 -dk ../../var/edk2-arm-vars.fd.bz2
cd ../..
cat > run <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
d="$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")"
exec sudo DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="$d/build/angle:$d/lib" "$d/bin/qemu-system-aarch64" -machine virt,accel=hvf -cpu host -smp "$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)" -m 4G -device pcie-root-port,id=pcie -device virtio-sound-pci,addr=0x0.0x0,bus=pcie,multifunction=on,audiodev=audio,streams=1 -device virtio-gpu-gl-pci,addr=0x0.0x1,bus=pcie -device virtio-keyboard-pci,addr=0x0.0x2,bus=pcie -device virtio-net-pci,addr=0x0.0x3,bus=pcie,netdev=net -device virtio-rng-pci,addr=0x0.0x4,bus=pcie -display cocoa,gl=es -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=$d/share/qemu/edk2-aarch64-code.fd,readonly=on" -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=$d/var/edk2-arm-vars.fd" -drive "id=virtio,if=none,format=raw,file=$d/var/virtio.raw,discard=on" -device virtio-blk-pci,addr=0x0.0x5,backend_defaults=on,bus=pcie,drive=virtio -audiodev coreaudio,id=audio,out.fixed-settings=false -netdev vmnet-shared,id=net -chardev qemu-vdagent,id=spice,name=vdagent,clipboard=on -device virtio-serial-pci,addr=0x0.0x6,bus=pcie -device virtserialport,chardev=spice,name=com.redhat.spice.0 -full-screen -runas "$(id -u):$(id -g)" "$@"
EOF
chmod a+x run

## run-x86_64.sh
set -eux
mkdir -p depot_tools build/qemu source/angle source/libepoxy source/virglrenderer source/qemu var
git -C depot_tools init
git -C depot_tools fetch https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools 5400d9ef5a9e1b22fc846eca81d5a27df02d838a
git -C depot_tools checkout FETCH_HEAD
git -C source/angle init
git -C source/angle fetch https://chromium.googlesource.com/angle/angle f9bad5e27d61e2ab6a7504b1793be5aa14eb1414
git -C source/angle checkout FETCH_HEAD
git -C source/libepoxy init
git -C source/libepoxy fetch https://github.com/startergo/libepoxy.git macos
git -C source/libepoxy checkout FETCH_HEAD
git -C source/virglrenderer init
git -C source/virglrenderer fetch https://github.com/akihikodaki/virglrenderer.git macos
git -C source/virglrenderer checkout FETCH_HEAD
git -C source/qemu init
git -C source/qemu fetch https://github.com/akihikodaki/qemu.git macos
git -C source/qemu checkout FETCH_HEAD
export DEPOT_TOOLS_UPDATE=0
export PATH="$PWD/depot_tools:$PATH"
cd source/angle
scripts/bootstrap.py
gclient sync -D
gn gen --args=is_debug=false ../../build/angle
cd ../..
ninja -C build/angle
[ -e build/libepoxy/meson-info ] || meson setup "-Dc_args=-I$PWD/source/angle/include" -Degl=yes -Dx11=false "--prefix=$PWD" build/libepoxy source/libepoxy
meson install -C build/libepoxy
[ -e build/virglrenderer/meson-info ] || meson setup "-Dc_args=-I$PWD/source/angle/include" "--pkg-config-path=$PWD/lib/pkgconfig" "--prefix=$PWD" build/virglrenderer source/virglrenderer
meson install -C build/virglrenderer
cd build/qemu
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PWD/../../lib/pkgconfig" ../../source/qemu/configure "--extra-cflags=-I$PWD/../../source/angle/include" "--extra-ldflags=-L$PWD/../angle" "--prefix=$PWD/../.."
make -j$(nproc) install
cd ../..
cat > run <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
d="$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")"
exec sudo DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="$d/build/angle:$d/lib" "$d/bin/qemu-system-x86_64" -machine pc-q35-9.0,accel=hvf -cpu host -smp "$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)" -m 4G -device pcie-root-port,id=pcie -device virtio-sound-pci,addr=0x0.0x0,bus=pcie,multifunction=on,audiodev=audio,streams=1 -device virtio-gpu-gl-pci,addr=0x0.0x1,bus=pcie -device virtio-keyboard-pci,addr=0x0.0x2,bus=pcie -device virtio-net-pci,addr=0x0.0x3,bus=pcie,netdev=net -device virtio-rng-pci,addr=0x0.0x4,bus=pcie -display cocoa,gl=es -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=$d/share/qemu/edk2-x86_64-code.fd,readonly=on" -drive "id=virtio,if=none,format=raw,file=$d/var/virtio.raw,discard=on" -device virtio-blk-pci,addr=0x0.0x5,backend_defaults=on,bus=pcie,drive=virtio -audiodev coreaudio,id=audio,out.fixed-settings=false -netdev vmnet-shared,id=net -chardev qemu-vdagent,id=spice,name=vdagent,clipboard=on -device virtio-serial-pci,addr=0x0.0x6,bus=pcie -device virtserialport,chardev=spice,name=com.redhat.spice.0 -full-screen -runas "$(id -u):$(id -g)" "$@"
EOF
chmod a+x run
	set -eux
	mkdir -p depot_tools build/qemu source/angle source/libepoxy source/virglrenderer source/qemu var
	git -C depot_tools init
	git -C depot_tools fetch https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools 5400d9ef5a9e1b22fc846eca81d5a27df02d838a
	git -C depot_tools checkout FETCH_HEAD
	git -C source/angle init
	git -C source/angle fetch https://chromium.googlesource.com/angle/angle f9bad5e27d61e2ab6a7504b1793be5aa14eb1414
	git -C source/angle checkout FETCH_HEAD
	git -C source/libepoxy init
	git -C source/libepoxy fetch https://github.com/startergo/libepoxy.git macos
	git -C source/libepoxy checkout FETCH_HEAD
	git -C source/virglrenderer init
	git -C source/virglrenderer fetch https://github.com/akihikodaki/virglrenderer.git macos
	git -C source/virglrenderer checkout FETCH_HEAD
	git -C source/qemu init
	git -C source/qemu fetch https://github.com/akihikodaki/qemu.git macos
	git -C source/qemu checkout FETCH_HEAD
	export DEPOT_TOOLS_UPDATE=0
	export PATH="$PWD/depot_tools:$PATH"
	cd source/angle
	scripts/bootstrap.py
	gclient sync -D
	gn gen --args=is_debug=false ../../build/angle
	cd ../..
	ninja -C build/angle
	[ -e build/libepoxy/meson-info ] \|\| meson setup "-Dc_args=-I$PWD/source/angle/include" -Degl=yes -Dx11=false "--prefix=$PWD" build/libepoxy source/libepoxy
	meson install -C build/libepoxy
	[ -e build/virglrenderer/meson-info ] \|\| meson setup "-Dc_args=-I$PWD/source/angle/include" "--pkg-config-path=$PWD/lib/pkgconfig" "--prefix=$PWD" build/virglrenderer source/virglrenderer
	meson install -C build/virglrenderer
	cd build/qemu
	PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PWD/../../lib/pkgconfig" ../../source/qemu/configure "--extra-cflags=-I$PWD/../../source/angle/include" "--extra-ldflags=-L$PWD/../angle" "--prefix=$PWD/../.."
	meson setup --reconfigure ../../source/qemu
	meson install
	[ -e ../../var/edk2-arm-vars.fd.bz2 ] \|\| cp ../../source/qemu/pc-bios/edk2-arm-vars.fd.bz2 ../../var && bzip2 -dk ../../var/edk2-arm-vars.fd.bz2
	cd ../..
	cat > run <<'EOF'
	#!/bin/bash
	d="$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")"
	exec sudo DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="$d/build/angle:$d/lib" "$d/bin/qemu-system-aarch64" -machine virt,accel=hvf -cpu host -smp "$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)" -m 4G -device pcie-root-port,id=pcie -device virtio-sound-pci,addr=0x0.0x0,bus=pcie,multifunction=on,audiodev=audio,streams=1 -device virtio-gpu-gl-pci,addr=0x0.0x1,bus=pcie -device virtio-keyboard-pci,addr=0x0.0x2,bus=pcie -device virtio-net-pci,addr=0x0.0x3,bus=pcie,netdev=net -device virtio-rng-pci,addr=0x0.0x4,bus=pcie -display cocoa,gl=es -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=$d/share/qemu/edk2-aarch64-code.fd,readonly=on" -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=$d/var/edk2-arm-vars.fd" -drive "id=virtio,if=none,format=raw,file=$d/var/virtio.raw,discard=on" -device virtio-blk-pci,addr=0x0.0x5,backend_defaults=on,bus=pcie,drive=virtio -audiodev coreaudio,id=audio,out.fixed-settings=false -netdev vmnet-shared,id=net -chardev qemu-vdagent,id=spice,name=vdagent,clipboard=on -device virtio-serial-pci,addr=0x0.0x6,bus=pcie -device virtserialport,chardev=spice,name=com.redhat.spice.0 -full-screen -runas "$(id -u):$(id -g)" "$@"
	EOF
	chmod a+x run