Status of deployment for Linux and BSD : not usable for now, UPDATE July 2022 still the same

[fabienmagagnosc]

I did some testing on a Macbook Air M1 and a Macbook Pro 14 M1 max, and the result are not great at all ;-( and management is asking to migrate to Parallel where we got way more success.

Here, a summary, maybe you got some info/recommandations :

• Ubuntu 20 => working with the daily ARM image, update on going, the graphical interface is not scaled properly, but usable
• Ubuntu 22 => not working as the daily image for Arm are with kernel 5.15 or more ... 5.11 required to boot due to VMware issue
• Fedora 35 => working with Wayland disabled (you can upgrade to Fedora 36 if you kept an old kernel but its' wheelbarrow)
• Fedora 36 => not working as with kernel 5.15 or more ... 5.11 required to boot due to VMware issue again
• Centos 8 stream => installation not working, keep looping on the Grub install prompt
• Centos 9 stream => working with Wayland disabled but no GUI working
• FreeBSD => boot section not detected
• OpenBSD => boot section not detected

Some got some nice result with opnesuse but sadly, as debian ... we don't use them ;-(

Parallels got us to install everything except FreeBSD ;-( so, I'm wondering if after now 3 months, VMware got some improvements available, or we'll be stuck with this for a while

UPDATE : we are stuck ... we move everything to Parallels, and look at VMware Fusion only from time to time, to see any change, but no change now since March 2022, so over 3 months now.

like quite a lot of companies out there using VM : migration to M1 is promising (we got really nice productivity improvement) but only the Virtualization side is blocked with VMware fusion not up to speed it seem (compared to parallel desktop)

UPDATE : we migrated to Parallels

FYI : the tools we use :

• GCC
• JDK 1.8
• JDK 11
• git/subversion/maven
• Ansible
• Docker
• Firefox + Chrome

Tips :

• Fedora 35 works with Wayland disabled
• CentOS 9 Stream works with Wayland disabled, but no docker (CE at least) and no ansible (via EPEL) and no Chrome

[treee]

Which version of FreeBSD did you use? I installed version 13.0 and that went perfectly fine, no problem booting it and I don't recall having to do any special config changes to make it work. OpenBSD and NetBSD I have tried too but couldn't get those to work yet (if anyone has tips...).

[neafevoc]

What version of FreeBSD? amd64 or arm64?

[ColoradoMarmot]

I would hold off making decisions if you can - they've indicated there's a new build coming this month.

[Luke_H]

The name of this forum is "Fusion TP 22H2" but the latest build is still 21H1 (19431034). Is there a new build available for testing anywhere?

[Technogeezer]

@Luke_H the update hasn't been released yet but the fact that they've changed the name of the forum is making me think that an update may not be too far off. 

@Mikero did say that he was anticipating releasing an update sometime this month. I'm hoping his crystal ball is accurate. 

🤞🙏

[palter]

@Mikero tweeted last Thursday (https://twitter.com/mikeroySoft/status/1550204520528900096) that a new TP for both Intel and ARM would be released this week.

[Technogeezer]

Thanks for the heads 🆙. Hadn’t seen that. Will be interesting to see what the Intel version of the TP will bring along with enhancements for Apple Silicon. 

[ColoradoMarmot]

Intersting timing.  Microsoft announced Sunday that you can now buy a retail license for Windows 11 (haven't dug into the EULA about limitations, but at least it's a step forward).

[Mikero]

Where'd they announce that?

[Technogeezer]

I just looked at best buy.com  and they have a retail box of Windows 11 Home or Pro (with a release date of late April 2022). You can get one with a USB stick or digital download. Agreed that it moves the needle, and is especially useful for Intel architectures. While the package contains the license, I'd still like to see if they have a downloadable or USB installer for Windows 11 for ARM.

Now to remove the last gray area, Microsoft has to officially bless running Windows for ARM on a VM on Apple Silicon (I couldn't care less at this point that there's no Boot Camp option as that is dependent on Apple, where running a VM is not).

[ColoradoMarmot]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-now-sells-windows-11-licenses-directly-to-pc-diyers

There's links there to buy download licenses direct from Microsoft, but I don't know if ARM is included.

They haven't changed the required processor page yet (still only lists Qualcomm), but maybe a decoupling is buried in the T's and C's?

[Technogeezer]

---

@ColoradoMarmot wrote:

They haven't changed the required processor page yet (still only lists Qualcomm), but maybe a decoupling is buried in the T's and C's?

---

From what I read in the T & C's as I tried to navigate through the Microsoft EULAs, all paths led to the supported CPU list. My opinion is that they won't decouple it.  😧

[Forge128]

Sounds like Mike Roy hadn't heard anything about Win11 ARM being available via other channels, so I'd guess that's not coming in the TP refresh. Now we just need the TP refresh to drop, so we can see.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Well, they changed the forum name, so we must be getting close 🙂

[Technogeezer]

You might want to take a listen to this Unexplored Territory podcast posted last Sunday - here's the Podcasts (on macOS and probably iOS) app link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/022-vmware-fusion-and-workstation-tech-preview/id1587672642?i=... 

Michael Roy previewed what's upcoming in the TPs. There are snippets of information about the tech preview refresh, which include mentions of the inclusion of a new TPM device that doesn't require the entire VM to be encrypted ( looks like it's a better implementation of the "experimental" TPM in Fusion 12 that was not ready for prime time), and driver support for network and 2D graphics for Windows 11. All on the Apple Silicon version of the tech preview (other Windows 11 work has been done for Workstation and Fusion on Intel).

While this doesn't look like a full VMware Tools implementation, it does indicate that VMware has donesome work for Windows 11. I'm hoping this means that even though the Microsoft gray areas still might exist, Windows 11 might be a bit easier to install and run. Will try it out the first I can get my hands on the update and report back.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Very cool.  2D graphics and network/shared folders would go a long way towards making it usable for most use cases.

[Technogeezer]

Nothing was said about shared folders, just the network driver though. ... ☹️

However given how well (or not well) VMware shared folders work. just using plain old tried and true SMB file sharing is probably much, much better.