Running X86 Windows in VMWare Fusion in Macbook Pro M1

[DeltaTango11]

Hi Guys,

How can I run x86 windows (7 or 10) in my Macbook Pro M1 with the VMWare Fusion. I use my windows VMs for the malware analysis purpose and since almost all malware are targeted for x86 system, the sandbox VM should be x86. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[palter]

Another alternative is to run an ESXi server for your old VMs. You can then access them though Fusion on your Apple silicon machine. (When Fusion is released, you'll need a Pro license.) If any of those VMs are macOS, you'll need an Intel Mac. Otherwise, you can setup a small, inexpensive Intel box (e.g., an Intel NUC).

[SvenGus]

Just FYI, an interesting new thing is that there is now also a VirtualBox 7 beta for Apple Silicon, even if at a very, very early stage: and it indeed looks like it is both a virtualiser and an emulator; even if it also looks like it doesn’t work, yet: who knows, do we maybe have a future UTM competitor, here (or is the current emulation capability perhaps only some form of pre-alpha glitch?)…? 

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=106919

https://youtu.be/7RwS6WgLthk

[Mikero]

Yah it's a bit unclear...

In a way the ARM64 package "slipped out", and it's not expected to work reliably. The implementation isn't complete yet (which is what you saw), and in top of that the performance is known to be extremely low. It isn't anywhere near production ready, we know. This will not change for VirtualBox 7, and the "Technology Preview" marker will stay for the foreseeable future, indicating that it won't be supported at all.

At best you'll get some really old 32-bit Linux to run to some degree, such as DSL 4.4.10. No chance even with Ubuntu 16.04 i386.

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and

There has been no port to M1/M2. All there has been is early work that does nothing useful but somehow escaped the stables. You can safely forget all about it for now.

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Maybe VirtualBox 8 will have arm64 vm support in like 2024?

[ColoradoMarmot]

Difference between a real commercial offering and a hobby isn't it?

[ak171]

Hi Team,

I want to run x86_64 Linux  in my Macbook Pro M1 with the VMWare Fusion. I have to use linux based system for code compilation. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Thanks!

[RDPetruska]

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@ak171 wrote:

Hi Team,

I want to run x86_64 Linux  in my Macbook Pro M1 with the VMWare Fusion. I have to use linux based system for code compilation. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Thanks!

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Not possible with a virtualization product... you need an emulation product.

If you need a linux based system, you will need an ARM Linux version.

[Technogeezer]

@ak171 if you do decide to use an emulator, I suggest using UTM - which provides a much more friendly front end to QEMU. Emulating an Intel chipset does incur a performance hit. It works, but it will be slower than you anticipate.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Honestly, I wouldn't try, especially for compilation.  Performance is going to be horrible.

Use an Intel machine.

[Technogeezer]

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@ColoradoMarmot wrote:

Honestly, I wouldn't try, especially for compilation.  Performance is going to be horrible.

Use an Intel machine.

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@ColoradoMarmot is correct. Just because you can does not mean you should.

[ak171]

I've setup ubuntu x86 with UTM in my mac m1 setup...it is too slow with UTM. 

[RDPetruska]

So why not set up an Ubuntu ARM one?

[ColoradoMarmot]

Completely expected.  Plus, it's not a real CPU, so you may find that there are subtle nuances in how it works that would render any sort of compilation/testing/certification invalid.

This really is like diesel vs gas...or at least like trying to run e85 in an e15 engine.  It may work, but it'll do bad things.

Don't expect this to change btw.  Unless there's an order-of-magnitude improvement in the underlying ARM/Mx chip performance, CPU level emulation at the OS level is always going to have unacceptable performance for production work.

[Technogeezer]

It's not just a change in the performance of the Apple Silicon chipset.. It's more to do with the underlying technology of emulating a different CPU chipset in its entirety for a dynamic "application" such as an operating system. Emulation simply doesn't perform because of totally different chipset hardware architecture and in many cases there's not a 1:1 mapping between cpu instruction  sets. Especially when there's a CISC processor such as Intel.

It's a lot simpler to emulate or translate a user mode application that doesn't have to deal with the intricacies of privileged instructions, hardware registers, hardware level I/O interfaces, and virtual memory management. 

[alissa914]

I was hoping for this but can understand why it won't.  You may just be better off getting a cheap x64 based PC to run your x64 and x86 OSs in VM.  Performance is probably going to be much better anyway.

Using VirtualBox on an AMD Ryzen 5 running XP was painfully slow and that was on the same architecture.  VMWare runs it significantly better but again... native architecture.  While maybe someone can do it, you'll probably just end up buying an inexpensive Intel/AMD box and run it then RDP into it.

[Biagio_Paruolo]

I think that a solution is to use Intel MAC MINI as Server and Server Virtualization and to use XCODE or X86 PC as Workstation + MAC Mini 

[Scimmia]

I would suggest using Triage