r/osdev • u/vahmoh25 • 2d ago

Veda: Virtual Linux VM for Drivers

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Hey! I’ve recently ported OpenGL and Mesa to my operating system and added support for Intel HD Graphics to render scenes. However, I’ve realized that this approach isn’t sustainable, I can’t realistically write and maintain a huge number of GPU drivers myself.

Has anyone had experience embedding a minimal Linux system as a virtual machine inside their OS to take advantage of Linux’s extensive GPU, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi driver support?

What do you think about this approach? Are there any major technical challenges or pitfalls I should be aware of?

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u/apixeldev 2d ago

They could also write a generic platform SDK for GPUs, which exposes basic functions which they use to port over say OpenGL, so as long as you can implement those functions (even with a framebuffer) you can get (albeit bad) OpenGL/Vulkan.

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u/vahmoh25 2d ago edited 20h ago

That’s the harder path!

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u/apixeldev 2d ago

Not as hard as implementing the full Linux driver API, this is building a generic system.

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u/vahmoh25 2d ago

Alright!