[garblegarble]

Would you elaborate what you mean by saying Linux on an M-series chip isn't straightforward? That's not been my experience, I (and lots of other devs) use it every day, Apple supports Linux via [0], and provides the ability to use Rosetta 2 within VMs to run legacy x86 binaries?

0: https://github.com/apple/container

[stuxnet79]

Clearly I'm not as knowledgable about this as I thought I was. I already have a Ubuntu x86 VM running on an Intel Mac (inside VirtualBox). Same with Windows 11. Can this tool allow me to run both VMs in an Apple Silicon device in a performant way? Last I checked VirtualBox on Apple Silicon only permits the running of ARM64 guests.

While I have a preference for VirtualBox I'd say I'm hypervisor agnostic. Really any way I can get this to work would be super intriguing to me.

[js2]

> Can this tool allow me to run both VMs in an Apple Silicon device in a performant way?

I use VMWare Fusion on an M1 Air to run ARM Windows. Windows is then able to run Windows x86-64 executables I believe through it's own Rosetta 2 like implementation. The main limitation is that you cannot use x86-64 drivers.

Similarly, ARM Linux VMs can use Rosetta 2 to run x86-64 binaries with excellent performance. For that I mostly use Rancher or podman which setup the Linux VM automatically and then use it to run Linux ARM containers. I don't recall if I've tried to run x86-64 Linux binaries inside an Linux ARM container. It might be a little trickier to get Rosetta 2 to work. It's been a long time since I tried to run a Linux x86-64 container.

[MBCook]

Possible catch: Rosetta 2 goes away next year in macOS 27.

I don’t know what the story for VMs is. I’d really like to know as it affects me.

Sure you can go QEMU, but there’s a real performance hit there.

[js2]

Not until macOS 28., but you're right, it's frustratingly unclear whether the initial deprecation is limited to macOS apps or whether it will also stop working for VMs.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102527

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...

[stuxnet79]

This can be avoided by not upgrading to MacOS 28 right? I'm new to Mac's and the Apple release schedule so I'm not sure how mandatory the annual updates are.

[labcomputer]

Does Apple Silicon support VMs within VMs?

What if you run MacOS 27 in a VM, and then run the x86-hosting VM inside that?

[saagarjha]

It would be pretty difficult for Apple to disable Rosetta for VMs.

[js2]

How so?

[MBCook]

Oh I have another year? Phew.

[alwillis]

> Last I checked VirtualBox on Apple Silicon only permits the running of ARM64 guests.

I used to use VirtualBox a lot back in the day. I tried it recently on my Mac; it's become pretty bloated over the years.

On the other hand, this GUI for Quem is pretty nice [1].

[1]: https://mac.getutm.app

[argsnd]

Run ARM64 Linux and install Rosetta inside it. Even on the MacBook Neo it'll be faster than your 2020 Intel Mac.

[DarmokJalad1701]

https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

This is a super easy way to run linux VMs on Apple Silicon. It can also act as a backend for docker.

[fragmede]

Pay Parallels for their GPU acceleration that makes Arm windows on apple silicon usable.