CentOS 7, 8 or 8 Stream do not and will never work, period. They is compiled with a 64KB pagesize which is incompatible with Apple Silicon's memory management uint. You will need to use CentOS 9 Stream which is compiled with a 4KB page size (as is Fedora and RHEL 9 beta.
I would try latest Ubuntu Server releases for 18.04 and 20.04 - I've installed the Server 20.04.4 with no issues in the past, for example. . There are no Desktop versions for ARM that work on Apple Silicon - they evidently just target for Raspberry Pi's and other embedded microcontrollers.
However, Linux kernels are having a problem right now with the Tech Preview across the board. The Linux kernel maintainers have introduced a change to address the latest Spectre vulnerabilities, and are propagating these changes across various kernel versions. This change renders those kernels unbootable on Fusion (and Parallels, from what I've heard too). Distributions are picking up these versions because of the security implications and as they do they are bricking our VMs.
- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
