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alshdavid

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 10, 2023
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It's possible to copy over the Rosetta2 binary to Asahi Linux and use it to run amd64 applications on bare metal Linux.

Does anyone know if that is permissible by Apple's license?
 
It's possible to copy over the Rosetta2 binary to Asahi Linux and use it to run amd64 applications on bare metal Linux.

Does anyone know if that is permissible by Apple's license?
Rosetta 2 apps for mac won’t work on Linux on mac m1, only on mac os.
 
I'm like 99.99% sure the EULA doesn't permit this.
It might if the EULA is tied to the Mac hardware and not the OS. Apple’s VM agreement is like this.

Since Rosetta 2 won’t work on generic ArmV8 CPUs there really isn’t any reason for Apple to prohibit it.
 
Since Rosetta 2 won’t work on generic ArmV8 CPUs there really isn’t any reason for Apple to prohibit it.
Why wouldn't it work?

The Github project linked above states:
Rosetta also runs on other ARM64 machines after being patched, but that's not legal. Please use FEX / Box64 instead.
 
It might if the EULA is tied to the Mac hardware and not the OS. Apple’s VM agreement is like this.
Maybe, but its up to the OP to read the EULA and make the determination. I'm still fairly sure its not permitted, but since I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm not really going to make any effort to find out
 
Why wouldn't it work?

The Github project linked above states:
I’m not sure how they managed to patch it but without Apple’s proprietary TSO (total store order) bit it probably won’t be reliable.
 
Why wouldn't it work?

The Github project linked above states:

I would like to bring your attention to the wording again:

Rosetta also runs on other ARM64 machines after being patched, but that's not legal. Please use FEX / Box64 instead.

The wording actually implies that running Rosetta outside MacOS, but within an MX Mac (M1, M2, etc), is legal. What is not legal is running Rosetta on a generic ARM64 machine.

Which makes sense, because I remember Asahi developers stating on Twitter they make use of Rosetta to translate binaries.
 
Any update on any of this? I'm trying to install this asahi linux rosetta on my linux VM, so I can run non-ARM programs. Very stuck on how to do this. Would appreciate any guidance
 

Rosetta pragmatically doesn’t leave macOS . This is more so a work around that cross mounts program binary data from a Linux VM running on top of macOS’s hypervisor subsystem back into macOS so Rosetta can work on it.

It isn’t just a VM image . It is a VM images hosted on top of macOS.

There are some aspects of Rosetta that are standard ARM64 compliant ( avoids that special hard work ‘hooks’ that Apple uses in macOS . ) . However, that doesn’t pragmatically make it macOS independent .
 
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Any update on any of this? I'm trying to install this asahi linux rosetta on my linux VM, so I can run non-ARM programs. Very stuck on how to do this. Would appreciate any guidance
I don't think it's officially allowed by apple, but I also experimented in that way. If you start with the linked GitHub project you should be able to achieve what you want. I had quiet a success.
 
It appears that Apple has improved the performance of Rosetta by adding support for TSO model to the Linux kernel through a patch.

It looks like Apple tried to upstream it, but I'm not sure what finally happened with it.

I have read that this patch also works on bare Linux. Can anyone confirm this?
 
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