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Parallels working on a solution for virtualization with ARM

krs


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Lots of questions and no answers.
The blog links back to itself.

I would think these companies with vitualization products for the Mac better find solution or that part of their business dies.
 

Raz0rEdge

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I would think these companies with vitualization products for the Mac better find solution or that part of their business dies.

You're not suggesting that they have been sitting around completely unaware of this change, are you? As illustrated in the video, I'm sure Parallels and VMWare already have a version of their software that works on Apple Silicon. VirtualBox is a different story since it's a cross-platform free solution, so less incentive for Oracle to be ready day one, but they'll get there eventually.
 
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I guess the question will be what sort of virtualization will they be doing? Currently, since they don't have to emulate the hardware, running Windows and other x86-based operating systems is relatively easy and well performing. But if they intend to run x86 Windows? This is a whole new matter. I was reading a discussion about the ARM version of Windows and apparently it's not likely coming to Macs. Microsoft only licenses it to OEMs, plus Qualcomm chipsets is required. I imagine there's some legal licensing issue in play here for why all this is, but anyway, it doesn't sound like Windows is coming, which means hardware emulation will be needed, like the old Virtual PC back in the PowerPC Mac days.

Now, if they aren't doing hardware emulation and truly just virtual machines for OSs that run natively on the Apple silicon, then I guess we're looking at macOS and Linux support as clients.
 
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chscag

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The naysayers in other forums are stating that Apple has given up on Windows and that as far as they're concerned, it's dead. I personally think all the talk about Windows being dead on future Macs is premature. As far as running an ARM version of Linux is concerned, I don't think that's going to be very popular.
 

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In most cases for Linux, it doesn't matter what underlying architecture you use since the system is very nicely abstracted. The Kernel will run on ARM, MIPS, X86, PowerPC, etc, etc, etc. The applications are largely unaware of what's happening and most distros have packages for all the main supported OS' so you don't have to compile anything.

In the off chance you have an app that isn't pre-compiled, you can compile it easily and be running.

It's really Windows that's the big question here. While there is a variant of Windows for ARM (came about with the original Surface ARM version) and was decent enough, but the lack of app support killed it quickly. There is a version that's still hanging around but not meant for general consumer use..
 
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... so it's been a year since the last rumour post...
some questions...

x86-64 Linux OS on Virtualbox (running via Rosetta) ?
x86-64 Windows 7 on VMWare Fusion (running via Rosetta) ?
x86-64 Windows 7 on VMWare Fusion Native ARM package ?
anyone know which boxes has been ticked.
My issue... I live in a older version of Visio, which I currently run inside Windows 7 in VMFusion - Visio is not cheap to simply buy a new version for a new platform, would prefer to copy my guestVM over and simply import/start... and then...
other1/2 of live is inside various environments inside either Docker (we'll get there) or inside Linux builds running inside VirtualBox deployed using Vagrant (now vagrant I'm sure will be port over quick, but VirtualBox, battling to find information, and then wondering... will it only run Linux OS's/distro compiled for ARM or would it be able to run a x86-64 virtualised on a virtual Intel layer)

G
 
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Running an OS in a vm under Rosetta isn’t going to happen. Ever. Both Parallels and VMware have beta versions that run the ARM version of Linux and Parallels can do Windows ARM. I don’t know where VirtualBox is with this. But no one is or will ever be able to run Intel Windows or Linux in a vm on Apple Silicon. Someone needs to do something that emulates the hardware, which is considerably more difficult to do and will be considerably more resource intensive if/when it happens.
 
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... so it's been a year since the last rumour post...

Well, much of it isn't a "rumor" anymore.

VMware has a free "tech preview" of Fusion running a VM on Apple Silicon, but it is only to run Linux and they have said that they will absolutely not be supporting Windows:




Parallels supports virtualizing Windows on Apple Silicon using Microsoft's "Windows 11 on ARM Insider Preview". The latter is not a full version of Windows, and it is unclear if Microsoft will continue to develop it or allow a license to Parallels to use it. For now, it seems, people using the Windows 11 on ARM insider Preview within Parallels are technically doing so illegally.




VirtualBox has shown no movement towards being developed to run Windows on Apple Silicon.
 

cwa107


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Well, much of it isn't a "rumor" anymore.

VMware has a free "tech preview" of Fusion running a VM on Apple Silicon, but it is only to run Linux and they have said that they will absolutely not be supporting Windows:




Parallels supports virtualizing Windows on Apple Silicon using Microsoft's "Windows 11 on ARM Insider Preview". The latter is not a full version of Windows, and it is unclear if Microsoft will continue to develop it or allow a license to Parallels to use it. For now, it seems, people using the Windows 11 on ARM insider Preview within Parallels are technically doing so illegally.




VirtualBox has shown no movement towards being developed to run Windows on Apple Silicon.

That's rather unfortunate, but thanks for sharing.

My 2018 MacBook Air is about ready for replacement, but I have no use for a glorified iPad that can't run Windows in any guise. I really wish Apple would have considered this use case when formulating their product lineup, and in particular, their Pro line.
 
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That's rather unfortunate, but thanks for sharing.

My 2018 MacBook Air is about ready for replacement, but I have no use for a glorified iPad that can't run Windows in any guise. I really wish Apple would have considered this use case when formulating their product lineup, and in particular, their Pro line.

Boot Camp didn’t happen out the gate when Apple switched to Intel. Currently, that aside, Microsoft is contractually obligated to Qualcomm to only support installing Windows for ARM on their chipsets as an OEM. That’s my understanding anyway. That may be limited to Windows 10 though. Parallels… I’m not sure how they are supporting virtualizing that legally.

At any rate, my point is some things need to happen before it happens, but I have no doubt dual booting Windows for ARM will come eventually.
 
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I'm shifting focus here, the BIG required for the VM is actually to run Visio...
So trying to determine which MS Office version for ARM includes Visio, hoping Visio is available on ARM...

G
 
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To my knowledge, there is no version of Visio for the Macintosh of any description. That's probably because there are a HUGE number of diagramming products already for the Mac. In fact, a gentleman on another discussion list created a huge flow chart to show all the alternatives and their strengths and weaknesses. Here is the file:
 

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will go look, thank you...

somewhat curious already... visio had a huge collection of stencils for HW platforms, switches, servers etc,
probably pushing luck if I am hoping that these tools can re-use the visio stencils.

G

To my knowledge, there is no version of Visio for the Macintosh of any description. That's probably because there are a HUGE number of diagramming products already for the Mac. In fact, a gentleman on another discussion list created a huge flow chart to show all the alternatives and their strengths and weaknesses. Here is the file:
 
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somewhat curious already... visio had a huge collection of stencils for HW platforms, switches, servers etc,
probably pushing luck if I am hoping that these tools can re-use the visio stencils.

It depends on whether any of the long list of diagraming alternatives for the Mac can import the file format that Visio uses (.vsd and .vsdx).

Or, as an alternative, this site will allow you to convert a Visio file into a number of common file formats for free!:

 

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