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AndrewBytes
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

M1(x) Mac running Fusion with legacy x86 Clients

So here's my story sad but true... 

I have several x86 VM Clients - I cannot dictate nor will I be able to find M1 arm equivalents because the original hardware will never become M1 Mac or ARM - they are and will always be x86 based. So I'm comfortably running my VMWare clients comfortably on an Intel based mac. Will I enjoy (guessing) double the battery, or double the speed, or not using my internal fan as an AirFryer that can keep my coffee warm - YES.  So here's my intelligently formed question; 

Will VMWare on an M1 mac comfortably run x86 Clients ported over to the M1(x)  Mac? Or am I bound to heat my house with intel processors and buy a more efficient A/C in my house?

Will Rosetta2 be able to translate this? Will VMWare supply an emulation for us old folks that need to keep these clients around for a few more years instead of begging companies to re-compile their code into ARM compatible processors which they wont do because they are equally a curmudgeon as I am.

Signed, 
#WhyDoINeedACommercialHairDryerForALaptop

p.s. I know this is hard. Try supporting a company from home with a measly 1gb connection and 2 4K monitors connected to a computer... HMM!!! HMMMM!!!! 

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

No.  Likely never.  There's a bunch of threads on this.

 

Rosetta 2 is sufficient for applications, but not for an OS, and Apple has given no indication of expanding it's capabilities.  VMWare is in the virtualization business, not the emulation business so it's unlikely that they will do it internal to Fusion.

The best that we can likely hope for is, for Windows 10 guests, to run Windows 10 ARM and then use Microsoft's x86/64 emulation inside windows for those applications (assuming they work with it).  But for Linux or older OS's, while not impossible, its highly unlikely that we'll see support.

 

All that said, if you don't need to buy hardware now (or even this year), the best option is to wait.  In the next two months we're going to have WWDC, and probably the VMWare Fusion for M1 release (or at least beta).  Maybe magic will happen....

 

One other option that might be viable is to move to a cloud service like shadow.tech or one of their less-gaming oriented competitors for your intel workloads.  That's what I'm looking at doing specifically for Games, but I'll bet with a 1GB internet connection you could find something with acceptable performance at a reasonable cost.  Heck, you could even VDI into a real windows server at your company.

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