Developer Skylar Taylor-Barrick has launched gbos-vm, a project enabling Googlebook OS to run on Apple Silicon Macs via a virtual machine. The system utilizes QEMU to boot the OS, starting with a Dell Googlebook recovery image downloaded from Google servers.
The project achieves GPU acceleration by using MoltenVK to translate Vulkan calls to Apple's Metal API. It employs POSIX shared memory for graphics buffers and manages Metal's 16-byte texture padding. The display is currently limited to a 60 FPS refresh rate.
Running gbos-vm requires an Apple Silicon Mac with 16GB RAM and 60GB storage. Users need Xcode tools, Homebrew, JDK, and Android SDK API 34. Note that the VM lacks a hardware secure element, verified boot, and physical Bluetooth device pairing support.