While [1]FEX-Emu has been garnering a lot of attention due to being sponsored by Valve and slated to be used by the Steam Frame for running Linux x86_64 binaries on AArch64, the [2]Box64 project continues moving along with similar goals for x86_64 binaries on other CPU architectures.

Released today was Box64 0.4.2 and beyond its AArch64 ambitions, it has also merged an initial PPC64LE back-end in beginning to work on POWER little-endian support. This PPC64LE back-end isn't yet finished but is already proving usable for those wanting to run Linux games and the like on IBM POWER / OpenPOWER hardware. Beyond AArch64/ARM64 and now PPC64LE, Box64 has also experimented with RISC-V RV64 and LoongArch back-ends too.

Also exciting with the Box64 0.4.2 release is adding support for the Steam Runtime 3 (SteamRT3) as well as Proton 11.0 that was [3]recently released in beta for that crucial Wine-based component to Valve's Steam Play.

The new Box64 has also begun implementing Vulkan x64 overlay support so that the Linux version of overlays for Steam, Fossilize, GameOverlayUI, and the like will begin to work under Box64.

For Linux gamers and POWER users, today's Box64 0.4.2 update is an exciting one. Those wanting to go through all the changes in full can do so via [4]GitHub .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/FEX-Emu

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Box64

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Proton-11.0-Beta

[4] https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64/releases/tag/v0.4.2