Eltech launched an application called ExaGear Desktop last year, offering the ability to run software developed for x86 chips on computers with ARMv7 processors. That means you can run x86 apps on a Raspberry Pi 2.

Now ExaGear Desktop can also work on chips featuring older ARMv6 architecture, which means the software now supports the first-gen Raspberry Pi as well.

exagear desktop

ExaGear Desktop is basically a virtual machine the emulates an x86 processor on ARM-powered hardware, allowing you to run apps which may not otherwise be available on a device like a Raspberry Pi, ODroid, CubieBoard, NVIDIA Jetson developer board, or similar hardware.

The software supports Linux-based operating systems including Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Debian 7 and Raspbian. Want to run Windows apps? You can’t use ExaGear Desktop to load the full desktop version of Windows, but you can install WINE and give specific Windows apps a try.

While ExaGear Desktop now supports the first-gen Raspberry Pi with a single-core ARM11 processor, like most apps, it will run better on faster hardware such as the Raspberry Pi 2, which features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor.

Eltechs normally charges $20 and up for ExaGear Desktop, but right now it’s on sale for about $10 off, which means you can buy Raspberry 2 version for $15, the first-gen Raspberry Pi version for $10, or a general-purpose ARMv7 version for $20.

via LinuxGizmos and Eltechs

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

2 replies on “ExaGear Desktop lets you run x86 apps on a Raspberry Pi (or other ARM-based devices)”

  1. One thread performance also is much more faster than qemu. In fact mentioned 5x is for one thread.

  2. It looks like they are using all the cores of whatever CPU it’s running on – which wouldn’t help much with an RPi B (you could use qemu and get the same sort of results), but does make a big difference for the RPi 2.

Comments are closed.