Can I run x86 docker images on Raspberry Pi 4 with this?

[bitcoinmeetups]

Hi,

I'm Mr. Hologram, a very friendly guy.

Can I run x86 docker images on Raspberry Pi 4 with this?

You don't mention aarch64 in the supported systems list but you suggest using qus here:

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=281532

[martin-g]

aarch64 is supported! I also wrote an article about this few years ago - https://martin-grigorov.medium.com/build-linux-software-for-foreign-cpu-architectures-on-arm64-463a95d15460

[umarcor]

You don't mention aarch64 in the supported systems list

We do list aarch64 as explicitly supported. The README says:

Ready-to-use docker images are provided for each of seven host architectures officially supported by Docker, Inc. or built by official images (docker-library/official-images: Architectures other than amd64?): amd64, i386, arm64v8, arm32v7, arm32v6, s390x and ppc64le.

Note that different projects use different keywords/terms to refer to architectures (instruction sets). arm64v8 is equal to aarch64. More precisely, AArch64 or ARM64 is the 64-bit extension of the ARM architecture that was first introduced in the Armv8-A architecture, while AArch32 is used to refer to previous 32-bit architectures. For several years, all AArch64 (ARM64V8) devices could also execute AArch32 natively, however, nowadays AArch64 only devices exist, which do need emulation in order to run 32-bit ARM binaries.

This project (i.e. Docker/Podman and QEMU) supports running amd64/x86_64 on Armv8 devices or AArch32 binaries on AArch64 only devices, or any of those seven architectures on any of the others.

[bitcoinmeetups]

Could you please provide a working example one-liner to run a simple GUI x86 Docker package on Raspberry Pi 4?

#CrossingLegs

[umarcor]

@bitcoinmeetups the example in the README will do: https://github.com/dbhi/qus?tab=readme-ov-file#setup

docker run --rm --privileged aptman/qus -s -- -p

That will register all foreign interpreters: i386 i486 alpha arm armeb sparc32plus ppc ppc64 ppc64le m68k mips mipsel mipsn32 mipsn32el mips64 mips64el sh4 sh4eb s390x aarch64 aarch64_be hppa riscv32 riscv64 xtensa xtensaeb microblaze microblazeel or1k x86_64.

If you want x86_64 only, specify it at the end:

docker run --rm --privileged aptman/qus -s -- -p x86_64

Then, just execute any x86_64 binary on the host. Executing any docker/podman/OCI container is just executing binaries within some namespace.

[umarcor]

The GUI is a different matter, not explicitly covered in this repository/project. The fact that GUIs cannot be executed on containers by default is a known limitation and lots of research went into it. Some use VNC, some propietary tools expose GUIs through browsers similarly (e.g. Matlab), Gtk has broadway, etc. The solution I most like is x11docker, which runs a window server on the host and shares it with the container, so that GUIs of tools executed inside the container are shown on the host as just one additional window.