Whisky is no longer actively maintained

giancarlostoro · 2025-04-09T12:41:16 1744202476

Does something like Whisky work in the new macOS Apple Silicon world? I assume its quite a bit slower to simulate Windows while at the same time translating x86 to Apple Silicon. I ask because this would be a justified break from this project, it's kind of a nightmare setup, you're better off just buying a $300 Windows laptop at Walmart or something.

jchw · 2025-04-09T12:54:36 1744203276

The thing is, "Apple Silicon" computers are very fast. They are, obviously, not the fastest computers you can possibly buy, but rather than monetize fast CPU cores Apple mainly monetizes SSD and RAM and does minimal segmentation on the CPU, so even the lowest end Mac devices are absurdly fast compared to low end PCs. Rosetta is also pretty fast, depending on the workload, since the hardware is specialized to support fast x86 emulation.

I reckon a lot of games on Apple Silicon would end up GPU bound before CPU bound.

fastball · 2025-04-09T12:49:23 1744202963

That is where Apple's GPTK (Game Porting Toolkit) came into play, and why Whiskey was popular at all. It allows for somewhat seamless interop between Wine and D3DMetal, which is an Apple translation layer from DirectX 11/12 instructions directly to Metal (Apple's Graphics API). Given that the majority of the cycles for video games are consumed by these graphics APIs, having that direct translation layer allows for fairly performant gameplay on Apple Silicon macs.

dimillian · 2025-04-09T12:45:45 1744202745

It's not. It's very fast, especially for gaming. Playing POE 2 with GPT2 or a recent wine version at max setting on 60+ FPS on those days. On a M3 MAX.

p_ing · 2025-04-09T12:54:26 1744203266

Tried Noita on an M2 Air. Yikes, unplayable.

kcb · 2025-04-09T12:57:44 1744203464

Really need the fan to maintain clocks while stressing the CPU and GPU. Still depending on the game the Air can still be pretty impressive, especially for native games.

pmx · 2025-04-09T12:45:14 1744202714

It runs incredibly well, I ran GTA5 on my old Macbook Pro M1 with it and got a respectable 60FPS on max settings. The apple GPTK is really very impressive.

galad87 · 2025-04-09T12:47:16 1744202836

Whisky was a front-end for Wine and related libraries, already running on Apple Silicon. So it already works I guess.

pariainterpares · 2025-04-09T12:45:41 1744202741

I never _not_ used Whisky on an Apple Silicon device. Recently played Control on my Mac mini M2 Pro with it.

MiscIdeaMaker99 · 2025-04-09T12:45:22 1744202722

Yes, CrossOver (which is mentioned in the article) works on Apple Silicon.

actionfromafar · 2025-04-09T12:45:08 1744202708

Don't see why Wine would be slower than any other x86 application ran in emulation.

floppiplopp · 2025-04-09T12:49:01 1744202941

Yes, there's "Kegworks". I use it to run the steam edition of dwarf fortress, which mostly works fine on my M4 mac mini.

bluecoconut · 2025-04-09T12:48:28 1744202908

I’ve been using whisky to play Elden ring on my M4 MBP and it’s been great! I love that the Game porting toolkit and wine all work so well. I did have to do some pinning of steam to an older version to keep it working recently. I guess I’ll move over to crossover soon

tobylane · 2025-04-09T12:43:45 1744202625

> Hell, even Rosetta would likely be more restricted as many of the extensions added in recent months were only added due to pressure from Mac gamers.

What are they?

seivan · 2025-04-09T12:50:16 1744203016

F16C/AVX2 support amongst other stuff.

throw_m239339 · 2025-04-09T12:47:25 1744202845

I used Bottle in the past and I must say I was quite surprised of the software I managed to run on Linux... For instance, Cinema 4D (up to R24 I think?). The hardest was to install flatpak on Porteus to install bottle...

So it is bottle but for Mac? Never heard of it before. I used crossover once on a Macbook 2010 to Run Deus Ex,... anyway these are great projects. I guess booting linux from a USB stick should work on a modern mac too? rather than emulating it.

pasc1878 · 2025-04-09T12:56:21 1744203381

It is a front end to wine the same as bottle.

You can't boot Linux on Modern Apple machines.

Asahi Linux is working on it, they support M1 and M2 machines but not later ones.

DeathArrow · 2025-04-09T12:45:09 1744202709

So no more Scotch? Just Bourbon?

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