Usage guide
A nice and clean start is using the felix86 shell:
This will disable logging and start a bash or zsh shell with a custom prompt.
In felix86 26.08 and later, you can start a program with the –shell command, which runs it via bash -c or zsh -c, which means it can find your binary in PATH:
In older verions you can achieve the same like so:
If you want logging to be enabled, use this command:
If you don’t want a shell, you can just run the program directly:
If installed in binfmt_misc (handled by install script, or with sudo -E felix86 -b) you can simply run x86 programs that are inside the rootfs:
By default /home will be mounted inside the rootfs, so you can also run x86 programs from $HOME.
Compatibility
There’s a compatibility list:
If you want to try a game that is not listed, you can make a compatibility report here:
https://github.com/felix86-emu/compatibility-list/issues
Thunking
There’s thunking support for GLX (OpenGL on X11) and Vulkan. You can enable it using FELIX86_ENABLED_THUNKS=glx,vk. This should improve performance in games.
Desktop shortcuts
Desktop shortcuts in Linux are usually XDG Desktop Entry specification files.
The shorcuts usually exist in the host desktop, since the host $HOME is mounted in the guest $HOME, but the binary usually exists inside the rootfs, not the host filesystem. Even if it does exist in the host filesystem, it may be a script that needs to be explicitly run with the x86 bash, so that filesystem accesses are resolved relative to the rootfs.
In order to be able to use it like a normal shortcut, we need to wrap the executable with felix86 --shell="...".
Here’s a sed one-liner that makes a desktop entry run with felix86:
Configuration
The configuration file exists at /etc/opt/felix86/config.toml.
You can get a specific config by specifying its group and value, for example: ROOTFS=$(felix86 --get-config general.rootfs_path)
You can set a specific config in a similar fashion, but it requires administrator privileges: felix86 --set-config logging.print_signals=true
To list all configs, use the -c option.
Each configuration has a respective environment variable. These can be discovered by reading the configuration file.
Profiles
You can use different execution profiles that set multiple configurations at once.
Usage:
There’s currently the following profiles:
extreme- Enables all optimizations, may break some games that rely on TSO.safe- Enables safe optimizations and TSO mode.paranoid- Disable almost all optimizations and enable some slow safety checks.zink- Enables Vulkan thunking and Zink usage in Mesa.
Each profile is a .toml file in $HOME/.config/felix86/profiles. Each profile is a partial or full version of the config file, with some configurations changed. You may create new profiles and pass them to FELIX86_PROFILE as a name (which will look relative to the profile directory) or as an absolute path.
DXVK
Installing DXVK is as simple as installing it on your host system:
# Set $ROOTFS to the rootfs absolute path for convenience
export ROOTFS=$(felix86 --get-config general.rootfs_path)
# Enter felix86 shell
felix86 --shell
# Go to dxvk directory
cd ~/Downloads/dxvk
export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine
cp x64/*.dll $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/windows/system32
cp x32/*.dll $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/windows/syswow64
# Run winecfg from inside felix86 shell and add native DLL overrides for
# d3d8, d3d9, d3d10core, d3d11, dxgi.
winecfg
Note
This is assuming you have FELIX86_MOUNT_HOME enabled, which is on by default, and that the WINEPREFIX already exists.
Make sure to enable Vulkan thunking for better performance:
# Needs to be exported before entering felix86 shell
export FELIX86_ENABLED_THUNKS=vk
felix86 --shell
gl4es
gl4es allows for using OpenGL on iGPUs in RISC-V boards, as those GPUs don’t support desktop OpenGL.
The iGPUs suck
Use a discrete GPU, if possible, as they tend to have way better Linux support and performance. When using a discrete GPU gl4es is not necessary.
You can download a prebuilt version of gl4es: https://cdn.felix86.com/misc/gl4es/gl4es.zip
Installation
Install the library to a known host location, such as /opt/felix86/gl4es/.
From the directory that contains the unzipped/built libGL.so.1, run the following:
export INSTALLATION_DIR="/opt/felix86/gl4es"
sudo mkdir -p $INSTALLATION_DIR
sudo mv ./libGL.so.1 $INSTALLATION_DIR
Make sure to symlink libGLX.so.0, as gl4es exports the libGLX symbols:
Usage
In order to use gl4es you need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH and enable thunking:
export INSTALLATION_DIR="/opt/felix86/gl4es"
export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11 # may be required for some games
export FELIX86_ENABLED_THUNKS=glx,egl
export LIBGL_NOBANNER=1
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$INSTALLATION_DIR:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
felix86 --shell
Warning
There’s currently no 32-bit thunking, so you need to try 64-bit games if you want to use the iGPU. A discrete GPU, like an AMD one, will be able to use the x86 drivers and not require thunking, so 32-bit games will work fine with a discrete GPU.
MangoHud
felix86 has a custom MangoHud fork that shows some JIT-related information. It may be useful for profiling games.
It is based on the MangoHud FEX integration.
Installation
You can use this script to install it:
Usage
You will need to enable thunking: export FELIX86_ENABLED_THUNKS=vk,wl,glx
Enable the stats in the MangoHud and felix86 side:
export MANGOHUD_CONFIG=fex_stats=status+hotthreads+jitload+smc+softfloat
export FELIX86_STATS_ENABLED=1
Set FELIX86_MANGOHUD=1 for Vulkan apps, or use /opt/felix86/bin/mangohud for both OpenGL and Vulkan apps.