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Felix Häcker

TIL that you can install aarch64 Flatpak apps on an x84_64 host and they will run finely, just a bit slower.

Flatpak automatically starts them with qemu under the hood.

I was not expecting that. I'm impressed.

#Flatpak #GNOME

Shortwave started from CLI using aarch64
Screenshot of system monitor where it is visible that Shortwave got launched with "/usr/bin/quemu-aarch64-static"
15 comments
DELETED

@haeckerfelix In a way, this means Linux did seamless architecture translation layers way before MacOS and Windows.

Felix Häcker

The question now is whether this also allows x86_64 binaries to run on an aarch64 host, for example on Asahi Linux machines?

Yaya.Cout

@haeckerfelix If it's like QEMU binfmt, then every arch can run on every computer (really useful when using x86_64 containers on my Raspberry)

Markus Göllnitz

@haeckerfelix On aarch64 machines, it definitely can run amd64 binaries. Tested that on Qualcomm phones, so cannot confirm it for Apple SoCs specifically. But browser engines usually break under QEMU, so Zoom, Discord, or Spotify did not work for me.

Sergey Bugaev

@haeckerfelix is this really some Flatpak-specific mechanism, or just qemu + bindmt?

Idcrafter

@haeckerfelix would box64/box86(if there is 32bjt support) not be faster?

jloc0

@haeckerfelix I’d try this on any of my aarch64 machines if I knew how to invoke this madness. I have rpi5, macMini, pbp… I’d be interested if it works as well!

Cheng Zhang

@haeckerfelix
Fedora 42 seems to plan to bundle FEX instead of qemu. Will flatpak switch FEX in this case?

Aaron Honeycutt | 🐧🚀🌕

@haeckerfelix weird as it does not work here. I have QEMU installed as well.

aaronh@pop-os:~$ flatpak run de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave/aarch64/stable
bwrap: execvp ldconfig: Exec format error

kechpaja

@haeckerfelix I'm far from the biggest Flatpak fan overall, but yes, that is both genuinely impressive and genuinely useful, especially if they get it to work in the other direction in a way that's sustainable on lower-powered devices (i.e. phones).

popey

@haeckerfelix That's rather novel! Does it allow x86 binaries on aarch64 hosts - the other way round?

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