mihawk-99/PS5_MihawkOS v6.0.0-alpha-6

PS5_MihawkOS-v6.0.0-alpha-6

on GitHub

MihawkOS is a passion project, not a piracy project.

It exists so you can play the games you own on the console you own.

• Piracy is not condoned.
• No games, saves, keys, firmware or exploits are included, and they never will be.
• Use only games and programs you have the right to run: your own copies, bought or installed by you.
• Requests for, or links to, games, keys, firmware or exploits are not welcome in this project's issues or discussions.

Resident Evil 4 runs. Installers are faster. The Alpha 5 hotfix is built in.

The sixth alpha of MihawkOS, the homebrew title that runs Windows games on a PS5 from a desktop of their own,
Mihawk OS. It is still experimental.

At a glance

What's new
Resident Evil 4 runs. DirectX 12 games that reserve graphics memory now start, instead of stopping with "Fatal D3D error (E_OUTOFMEMORY)".
Installers are about 20% faster. DirectX and Visual C++ setups start their many small programs more quickly.
The Alpha 5 hotfix is included: no dev.conf needed, and a payload checklist that says what is really wrong.

In this release

Resident Evil 4 and DirectX 12 · Faster installers · From the hotfix · Played on the console · Known limits · Installing or updating · Source and credits

Resident Evil 4 and DirectX 12 games

• Reserved graphics memory now works in games. Some DirectX 12 games, Resident Evil 4 among them, set aside a
  block of graphics memory and fill it in later. MihawkOS's graphics layer could not do that inside a game, so the game
  stopped at once with "Fatal D3D error (6, E_OUTOFMEMORY)", even with plenty of memory free. It now can.
• Resident Evil 4 (Steam) on a PS5 Pro (10.01): starts from Steam's library and plays steadily at about 87-91 frames
  a second over five minutes, with the memory guard never acting.
• Games are told how much video memory the console can really give. Resident Evil 4 was offered 5.26 GiB on a PS5 Pro
  and no graphics allocation was refused.

Faster installers

Installers start hundreds of small programs, and each one used to waste time looking for files that do not exist and
decoding the desktop wallpaper it never shows. Measured on a standard PS5 (13.60):

From the 5.0.1 hotfix

• No dev.conf needed. MihawkOS gets access to /data even when /data/homebrew/dev.conf is missing or points
  somewhere unreachable.
• The payload checklist tells you what is really wrong. When MihawkOS cannot see your payloads because it has no
  access to /data, it says so instead of calling every payload "Missing".

Played on the console

This release's build was tested on a PS5 Pro (firmware 10.01). The installer timings above were measured on a
standard PS5 (firmware 13.60) with the same installer changes, and that build passed the full battery of 104 cases there.

• PS5 Pro, firmware 10.01, the full test battery of 104 cases: 102 passed, the other two skipped by a test-network
  setting (alpha6-pro-2026-10-30-02).
• Resident Evil 4 on the PS5 Pro: five minutes in game from Steam's library at about 87-91 frames a second; no
  graphics allocation refused; the memory guard never acted.
• Resident Evil 3 demo (5 minutes, about 123 frames a second) and a 2D game (3 minutes, 61 frames a second):
  unchanged from Alpha 5; Steam's browser paused during each game and came back after.

Known limits

• Steam Big Picture is a little less smooth than in Alpha 4 on a standard PS5. Alpha 4 ran Steam's browser as
  several processes on firmware 12.00 and later; that used up the console's page tables and could crash it with a
  game open. It now runs as one process on every console: slower frames while scrolling went from 7 in Alpha 4 to
  about 66 (Alpha 3 had 162).
• The kstuff version is shown but not checked. The PS5 does not let MihawkOS ask kstuff its version; the checklist
  only sees that it is running. Please use Kstuff Lite 1.11 Beta or later.
• Restart the PS5 now and then. Pipe memory runs out after very many program starts. MihawkOS says Restart the
  PS5 when that happens.
• Resident Evil 4 has been tested on a PS5 Pro only. Measurements suggest it should also fit beside Steam on a
  standard PS5, but that has not been run yet.
• Firmware 6.xx to 9.xx: no volunteer has measured these yet; they use the "below 12.00" limits.
• The PS5 Pro has less memory for Windows programs, warning at about 850 MiB.
• Translations still need a native speaker's review. The Mihawk 11 desktop stays in English.
• The per-boot setup is yours: your payloads after every cold boot. Never use rest mode.
• Not supported: kernel drivers and anti-cheat, so many online games with anti-cheat will not run.

Installing or updating

Before you start: load the official payload set listed in Alpha 5's checklist, and close any other payload.

New install: copy PPSA99170 to /data/homebrew/, wait about 45 seconds, and open MihawkOS from the home screen.
The guided setup installs the runtime from a USB drive or over FTP. The README
has every step.

Updating from Alpha 5 or 5.0.1:

1. Back up your saves, for example from the WebUI's Saves page, or over FTP from
   /data/ps5proton/prefixes/mihawk/drive_c/users/Mihawk/.
2. Replace the PPSA99170 folder in /data/homebrew/ with the new one.
3. Open MihawkOS from its own icon. It sees that the runtime is older and offers to install the new one from the
   USB pieces or over FTP.
4. Restart the PS5, load your payloads, and open MihawkOS.

Your prefix, your games in C:\Games, Steam and your settings are kept.

No games, saves, keys or firmware are supplied. Use only games and programs you have the right to run.

Source, licences and credits

Changes since v5.0.1-alpha-5. Release source: the
complete corresponding source is the repository at that tag, with every patch MihawkOS applies to an upstream project
and the build scripts that pin every other input by revision or SHA-256. MihawkOS is free software under the GNU
General Public License v3.0 or later; each component keeps its own licence, listed with its pin in NOTICE.md, and
every licence text ships with the binaries.

Thank you to the testers who sent their logs, which found the missing dev.conf behind the "Missing" payloads; to
everyone reporting games on the compatibility list; to drakmor for ShadowMountPlus; to mpereiraesaa for
prospero-win and the Lapy daemon's port, with Arksama / Team PHU; to the Wine, Proton, GE-Proton,
DXVK, VKD3D-Proton and Mesa developers; and to the PS5 homebrew scene.

MihawkOS is an independent hobby project, not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Sony Interactive
Entertainment, Microsoft, Valve, Capcom or any game publisher. PlayStation, PS5 and DualSense are trademarks of Sony
Interactive Entertainment Inc.; Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation; Steam and Proton are trademarks of
Valve Corporation. You are responsible for having the right to the programs you run, and for whether modifying your
console is lawful where you live (LEGAL.md).

Ready to get started? Available releases · Installation guide · Source and credits