RHEL 8.7/8.8 on Fusion 13.0.2

[LeoSaa]

Hi All,

I am trying to install RHEL 8.7(*) or 8.8(**) over VMware Fusion 13.0.2 in a MB Pro M1 running Ventura 13.5, the VM starts but when I try to boot the RHEL installer selecting any option, it return to the same option (blinking the black screen), basically doing nothing.

Any ideas?

thanks,

* rhel-8.7-aarch64-boot.iso
** rhel-8.8-aarch64-boot.iso

[Technogeezer]

RHEL 8 can not run under Fusion on Apple Silicon (M1/M2) because RHEL 8 is incompatible with Apple Silicon hardware..

Red Hat compiled the RHEL 8 ARM kernels with a 64 KB page size. The Apple Silicon hardware does not support a 64 KB page size. There’s nothing VMware (or Parallels) can do to make those kernels run under virtualization.

Starting with RHEL 9, Red Hat compiles their kernels with 4 kb page sizes. Those versions work on Apple Silicon.

If you need something that’s close to RHEL 8, you might want to try Oracle Linux 8.7 or 8.8. It ships with an Oracle Unbreakable kernel on ARM architectures (not a Red Hat kernel) that is compiled with a 4KB page size and has an RHEL 8 compatible runtime environment. Just be aware that no VMware Tools or open-vM-tools are available for Oracle Linux 8. 

[LeoSaa]

Hi Technogeeze

Thank you so much for your quick answer, sad to hear (or read) that.

--

Leo.

[Technogeezer]

Unfortunately Leo, it is what it is.

In defense of not using RHEL 8, newer Linux kernels have improved support for arm64 architectures and do run better than older ones. In general the newer Linux distros tend to run better and are more stable on Apple Silicon.

It is interesting though that Red Hat made the decision to change their kernels from 64KB pages to 4KB pages starting in RHEL 9. That decision had to be made based on something other than the availability of virtualization on Apple's hardware.