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Comment by kees99 | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. On Linux-arm, all I have to do to run x86 apps is this:

  apt install binfmt-support qemu-user
  update-binfmts --enable qemu-x86_64

That's it. Neither "ownership of the stack", nor "whole lot of mumbo jumbo" is required.

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I think you just clearly outlined exactly my point. 90% of all PC buyers would look at your qemu install and say "WHAT?!". Hell 80% probably don't know what an x86 app is...and they shouldn't! If a person buys a new PC, it should be better, at time of purchase, than their old one without gotchas. They shouldn't need to learn about why some apps are slower or why a particular app doesn't run. That is why Apple's move was good. They not only made it just work..but the M1 ran x86 apps faster than the outgoing model.

I have to assume that someone selling an ARM laptop with Linux would do that for you so the compatibility is transparent.

It's a very small change to the installation medium, though. Your distribution already pre-selects hundreds of packages and performs configuration -- this can be another one.

I'm a little surprised the maintainers haven't done so - but I haven't actually used the workflow. The implementation appears transparent; it registers a format with the kernel.

Maybe there are downsides. You hint at a very likely one - performance.

QEMU can do remarkably well with virtualization... but this, I'm not sure. I'm hopeful!

Anyway, with all that in mind... I think the point against requiring such extreme 'vertical integration' remains

If the argument against these two commands is it, then it's extremely trivial to resolve.

How's the graphical performance in qemu? I tried using ZorinOS via Windows' hyper-v - which should run at native cpu speed - but the graphical performance was certainly not "daily driver-able".

Comment above is about enabling [qemu-user]. Hyperv is more akin to [qemu-system].

With latter, like with any full-system emulation, for top graphics performance, you probably want a separate video card and [pci pass-through] it to the guest VM.

[qemu-user] https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/user/main.html

[qemu-system] https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/index.html

[pci pass-through] https://askubuntu.com/questions/1406888/

It's worth noting for graphical performance with QEMU... guests can be pretty nice with 'virtio' and 'Spice' :)

For simpler needs (ie: mostly 2D, very minimal 3D) it's great. I use this mostly for isolated browsing environments and am very pleased.

I believe this works with both Windows and Linux guests, though drivers are more annoying where you'd expect.

Thanks!

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