M1 chip and virtual windows environment

Microsoft Remote Desktop is working fine for me on a Macbook Air with M1.

Citrix and Remote Desktop are not "virtual Windows environments".

They are terminal sessions connecting to Windows running on a remote host.

Virtualization of Windows is another animal entirely.

... Terminal is very much still Alive and well in MacOS Big Sur.

But certain software titles may need some time to "get with the program" and issue versions that will run under Big Sur. Check with the software Manufacturers.

Intel or Apple-Silicon version makes no difference, as Apple-Silicon Macs contain a robust emulation environment that allows all well behaved Big Sur Intel software to run on Apple-Silicon.

I just purchased the newest MacBook Air with M1 chip, and immediately began to set it up for WFH use with Remote Desktop. The latest MS Remote Desktop app does download from the App Store, but I have not yet been able to get it to load up once downloaded. I am currently doing the Big Sur update (11.0.1) to see if that will make a difference, but I doubt it will.

When Apple was using PowerPC chips, they did research to figure out what part of Windows their Users needed to have.

The answer was, Not so much support for for Windows itself, but 'support for Windows DOCUMENTS'.

When they transitioned to Intel processors, it was seen as a "cute trick' to be able to run Windows directly on every model Mac. That era appears to be approaching an end.

So you may not see a groundswell of Apple effort to get Windows itself working on Apple-Silicon Macs. That is because according to Apple's research, Windows itself is not needed very much if you can freely interchange documents.

After downloading 11.0.1, I was able to load up MS Remote Desktop after being prompted to allow Rosetta 2 to install. It appears to be running as it would on an Intel based MacBook Air.