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Virtualbox mac m1 windows5/6/2023 ![]() ![]() Those are the words I wanted to hear so I signed up. To run Windows 10 for ARM64, it turns out Microsoft allows you a free download if you sign up for a free membership in the Windows Insider Program. Without the Guest Tools, your mouse and keyboard may not work, your WiFi won’t be recognized, perhaps sounds won’t come out of your speakers, and more. You need two things to make an image work properly: an operating system and what are called Guest Tools tailored to your hardware. Virtual machine software works by creating an image that is the virtual machine. I will, however, go through an overview of how this works though so you have context for my discovery in going through his steps. He tells you what to download, how to configure it, and which buttons to push to make it go, all with screenshots to make sure it’s clear what he’s telling you to do. I’m not going to go through the installation in detail, because Steve Sande does a fabulous job of it. Let’s Do This! UTM Gallery of OS Virtual Machines Of course, that’s all the motivation I needed to proceed. This makes this a fun experiment, possibly a colossal waste of time, and when I’m done I’ll have something I don’t need. As I mentioned before, Windows on ARM isn’t really supported to do this, and even if I succeed, apps would have to be compiled for 64-bit ARM to run on it. I found an article by Steve Sande on the OWC blog where he walks through the steps to configure UTM on an M1 Mac, and install Windows on ARM for free, legitimately. The value that UTM brings to QEMU is that it’s a graphical user interface not requiring a plethora of command line options and flags, so the learning curve is much more gentle. Under the hood of UTM is QEMU, a decades-old, free and open source emulation software that is widely used and actively maintained. Sadly, it requires you to jailbreak your iOS device so I declined that opportunity but running this on macOS Big Sur sounded like good fun. And then I discovered an open source virtual machine app I hadn’t heard of called UTM which runs on M1 and even on iOS. I did a bit of poking around looking into what virtual machine software runs on the M1s and discovered that VirtualBox from Oracle and the commercial software VMware Fusion do not, but Parallels Desktop does. When I asked him about this limitation of the M1 he said he didn’t see it as an issue (not sure why) but that he hadn’t yet looked into whether the open source virtual machine software VirtualBox would run on the M1, at least to run a Linux distribution (or distro as the cool kids say.) He has touted the Mac as the best platform because he can run macOS, Linux, and Windows all on one piece of hardware. ![]() ![]() Knightwise’s mantra is “making technology work for you” and the center of that is being a slider who can use the best tool for the job, rather than being fanatically attached to one company’s technology (like some people we know). I was actually surprised that in Knightwise’s recording about how much value he’s getting from his M1 MacBook Air, he never mentioned that as a downside. Not only has Parallels been supporting Apple Silicon the longest, but they have also been improving performance and 3D gaming experiences with each release.I talked on the show a while back about how the one downside to an M1 Mac is that you can’t run Windows, or at least not without a lot of faffing about. If you are happy to spend some money and need the best solution for using Windows on Arm on your Mac, you cannot go wrong with Parallels. However, make sure to check out the list of bugs and known issues before using it. If you are looking for a free virtualization solution for your M1 or M2 Mac, VirtualBox 7.0 beta is worth a look. VMware Fusion, another popular virtualization app for Macs, took a long time to build support, and a public release of the tech preview was released in the summer of 2022. Parallels was the first app to support virtualization on Apple Silicon Macs when it launched a few years ago. While the app was compatible with Intel Macs, it took years for the developers to add support for Apple Silicon, which is still in beta with the current release. The app is available for free and allows users to virtualize operating systems like Windows and Linux, on Mac. VirtualBox is a free virtualization app for Mac, developed by Oracle. The app now supports both M1 and M2 Macs, alongside improved 3D experiences with DirectX 11 and OpenGL support, IOMMU and EPT support for nested virtual machines, encryption support for virtual machines, and a “top”-like tool for monitoring CPU and memory usage for each running virtual machine. VirtualBox 7.0 beta adds support for Windows on Arm virtualization on Apple Silicon Macs. ![]()
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