Linux OS and Nintendo Switch enthusiasts fused two disparate systems to create Horizon Linux. Briefly, his Redditor named Kent J Hall patched the Arm64 Linux kernel to Run Nintendo Switch games nativelyHall stresses that this is not an attempt to recreate Nintendo’s Horizon OS and is not intended to run on Switch hardware. Any Arm64 hardware platform.
After failing once or twice, Hall decided to devote much of his spare time to the Horizon Linux project summarized above. Patching Arm64 Linux seemed like a sensible way to achieve his goal. Linux,” explains Hall. The project “should run just fine on low-end hardware given that it doesn’t need to emulate a CPU,” he added. Additionally, the project is flexible and promises game preservation.
Horizon Linux development Yuzu, while preserving system services, GPU emulation, app loaders, etc., while picking up scissors for unnecessary pieces of code such as kernel and CPU emulation. The developers also mention that they spent a lot of time making each system service run permanently in its own thread.
The Redditor behind this project has reached an important milestone and decided to go public at this time. Hall concedes that the work was “far from finished” and said the first commercial game, Puyo Puyo Tetris, can be played on Horizon Linux.
Hall has released several videos showing Puyo Puyo Tetris in action on the M1 Max MacBook Pro and Nvidia Jetson Nano. Sadly, no video is available at the time of this writing. I don’t know why. Note that the game is running natively on Arm CPUs on these systems, as noted above. However, Jetson Nano (for example) uses the same GPU emulation layer that Yuzu uses, even though it has his Tegra X1 GPU, which is the same as his Switch.
Note that some Raspberry Pi computers, including the Raspberry Pi 3 and 4, have Arm64 CPUs.
Hall recently started a new job, so it looks like he needs some encouragement to stick with the project.If you have an Arm64 system you’d like to test Horizon Linux on, comment on the developer’s Reddit post. or visit the linked top, Horizon Linux GitHub repository.
Interestingly, Hall apparently didn’t know skyline Nintendo Switch emulator for Arm/Android. Since the Reddit post started noticing, one of the major Skyline developers asked a Horizon Linux developer to join them on Discord, so it looks like cross-pollination could occur.
