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Release 0.1.2 - Windows ARM support!

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@jamesstringer90 jamesstringer90 released this 07 Jun 20:18
· 39 commits to main since this release

Added

  • Windows on ARM (ARM64). App Sandbox now runs on ARM64 Windows PCs and can
    create ARM Windows 11 VMs with GPU-PV — paravirtualized GPU acceleration in
    the guest. Test platform: Asus Zenbook A14 Snapdragon X Plus 2025.
  • GPU-Test.exe. Which is a simple tool available for Windows x64/ARM that tests
    all rendering APIs at once (D3D12, D3D11, D3D10, D3D9, OpenGL, Metal).

Fixed

  • Hardware OpenGL in Windows VMs. OpenGL apps in the guest were stuck on
    Windows' GDI Generic software renderer (OpenGL 1.1) — apps needing OpenGL 4.3+
    (e.g. Blender) refused to start. The old approach selected Microsoft's OpenGLOn12
    driver via an AppInit DLL, but Windows disables AppInit DLLs when Secure Boot is
    on — and App Sandbox runs guests with Secure Boot on by default — so it never
    engaged (and even when it did, Windows' opengl32 dropped the GPU driver across the
    virtual GPU's render/display split). App Sandbox now installs the Mesa OpenGL
    driver directly into the guest, taking Windows' broken opengl32 out of the path,
    so apps get real GPU-accelerated OpenGL 4.6 (or software 4.6 with no GPU) — with
    Secure Boot left on.
  • New VMs could fail to start with an odd memory size. HCS (Windows' Host
    Compute Service) requires VM memory to be a multiple of 2 MB; the suggested
    default (half the host RAM) or a manually entered value could be odd (e.g. 7991 MB)
    and fail to start. RAM is now rounded to an even value in the suggested default,
    the create form, and inline edits.
  • New Sandbox dialog no longer closes by accident. Selecting text in a field
    and releasing the mouse outside the dialog no longer dismisses it.
  • Various stability and bug fixes across the Windows, macOS, and Linux components.

Known issues

  • x64 (emulated) apps in ARM Windows VMs don't get the OpenGL fix. The Mesa
    driver shipped on ARM is ARM64-only, so emulated x64 apps fail to initalize OpenGL,
    native ARM64 apps get full GPU OpenGL. x64 Apps can still use DirectX and Vulkan!
  • ARM Linux (Ubuntu 26.04 LTS) guests do not work in this release — on ARM,
    Windows is the only guest that works.
    Ubuntu 26.04's arm64 kernel constantly
    churns BPF JIT memory, which makes the kernel boot extremely slowly and never
    reach the Ubuntu desktop. On a Qualcomm Snapdragon X1-Plus (ASUS A14) using 25H2,
    the guest never came up and the App Sandbox agent never came online.