Virtualbox Mac m1

Oracle has not released a version of VirtualBox compatible with M1 devices. Parallels Desktop 17 (subscription) is compatible with Big Sur on M1 devices, but the guest operating system must be compiled for Apple Silicon ARM, as X86_64 operating systems are not supported.

Hi @spencerator,

While I have the same problem as you (I spin up tons of VM's for development), I'm actually pretty happy with my M1 machine for stuff like code compilation and video editing. I just run my VM's remotely on other x86 based machines (vSphere or my old Mac), or in the cloud (AWS in my case). Headless x86 machines with decent CPU/MEM/Storage can be pretty cheap these days, and cloud costs are also pretty low if you only spin machines up for short periods.

Apple are still selling Intel (x86) based Macs, and they have a 14 day "no questions asked" returns policy that would have allowed you to switch back to x86. They should have offered you that option when you said "hey, VirtualBox doesn't work and it's critical to my workflow" so I'd ask them why that was missed and whether they could be nice to you and extend the returns deadline.

If they won't extend beyond the 14 day returns window, you can still sell your M1's privately to fund the purchase of x86 Macs... and since M1 still has a fairly long lead time and low availability, you may break even or even make a profit.

With respect to support longevity, when they switched from PowerPC to x86, they supported the old machines for quite some time.

While Rosetta works for some stuff, Hypervisors access the hardware at a pretty low level, and the ARM instruction set is pretty different to x86 (and so requires a lot of heavy/cpu intensive emulation instead of running natively). Oracle has opted not to put the work in to port their code to ARM, and both Parallels and vmWare are opting to run hypervisors that allow ARM VM's only (at present).

If you're interested in going the emulation route (to run x86 OS) you might look at QEMU, which has a nice wrapper called UTM https://mac.getutm.app/

WRT you comments on M1 based Linux, there are many ARM based distros that will run under Parallels or vmWare Fusion but see https://asahilinux.org/about/ which is being developed specifically for M1. It's rumoured that ARM based windows will also run under vmWare Fusion for Apple Silicon, but it's doubtful this will be considered legal in the short term.

Try UTM.

You can get it directly from App Store, for a contributor fee (I suggest it, you got auto upgrade), free from site.

It is qemu with a mac-mized interface.

It works for me.

Smooth run of openSuse 15.4 beta arm64 and Ubuntu server 20.04 arm64 (with desktop interface, if useful). (Need some work to first stable install).

Windows, I'have no need, but the Win 11 Dev Prw arm64 run decently (but I don't trust to walk on this thin ice for any business or even end user application). Can run the old x64 code too, you can manual install a working Microsoft Store if necessary, with some work.

UTM need direct disk space for the virtual machines.

If you need to run the virtual machines from Thunderbolt storage or cloud storage, better to use directly qemu trough command line interface (but is possible to make an app-launcher for every vm, to put in Application folder).

qemu works better (UTM use -1 version of qemu), but it needs more time to startup and more maintenance.

UTM from Apple Store probably can be compliance with some kind of trust, for security related's levels.

qemu is someway flexible: you can get the precompiled code from GitHub for non critical application or compile yourself from source, for paranoid IT security application.

vm's backup can be based on Apple TM or a time scheduled backup of the container folder for UTM, and with vm's scheduled backup for qemu.

Tested on Mac Mini M1 16gb

Mac Studio maybe work, I would like to try, but not in my plans for now.

I am available to be hired for support! :-)

I hope can help. ;-)

Then if they buy M1 Macs they will need to buy Parallels or VMWare and run VMs of operating systems that are ARM-based like Windows for ARM or, of course, Linux.

Qemu might work to emulate x86 instructions well enough to allow you to launch virtual x86 instances on M1, but none of the big vendors (VirtualBox, Parallels or VMWare) are willing to commit to that, and performance won't be great.

Not sure if this late.. I am running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS desktop over UTM installed on 2021 M1 Macbook Pro. There will be a couple of minor hiccups here and there. But it works like a charm (Even tried Windows 11). You cannot map camera or even some USB devices though. Other than that, it is a pleasant experience with UTM in the absence of any other alternatives like Virtualbox!

Parallels and VMWare can virtualize Apple Silicon on Apple Silicon now.

VirtualBox was always designed specifically for x86 so it’s unclear whether there will be an ARM version in the future.

This discussion is about Virtual Box, and not sure what their plans are.

I run Parallels for Mac with Windows 11 (ARM Version) with absolutely no issues whatsoever. If you do that, then you haven't wasted any money with your Mac.

Alternatively, I always have a Windows laptop "just in case" - but haven't used the Windows laptop for any "just in case" moments.

At present, Virtual Box only works on x86 processors and thus can only virtualize x86 processes.

There is a long discussion of the fact that there will likely not be a version for Apple Silicon here:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=98742

It's a third party product, Apple doesn't have to inform anyone about anything a third party developer does.

Meanwhile VirtualBox states in the first line on their first page (emboldening mine):

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.

That makes it pretty clear.

It’s because you fail to understand how bootcamp works, windows have binaries that use the instructions set of the intel compatible x86 cpu line, M1 is arm cpu based so the M1 cpu can natively run x86 binary code, Rosetta Stone wrap macs x apps so the code is emulated but calls to external libs will be using the arm M1 macOS libs.

bootcamp is not an emulation it’s windows x86 binaries running directly on the hardware without any apple layer, this would never with with x86 binaries on arm cpu.

if Microsoft released their arm win10 or win11 to the public for purchase it could make apple make it work with bootcamp

but ms only make windows non oem a thing because people could build their own computer which is not a thing with arm hardware so far.

tl;dr

if you want to run x86 intel binaries get a computer with an intel cpu

Yet right there on the VirtualBox "End User Documentation" page is:

In order to run VirtualBox on your machine, you need:

• Reasonably powerful x86 hardware. Any recent Intel or AMD processor should do.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation

Not emulated x86, x86 hardware.

You have 14 days to return Apple purchases for a full refund, though:

Items purchased at the Apple Online Store that are received between November 1, 2021 and December 25, 2021, may be returned through January 8, 2022.

dangoulet1 wrote:

How can actual developers use MacOS with the newest Apple MacBook Pro’s? Short answer, many can’t.

Want to run Virtualbox? Parallels? VMWare? No, you can’t do any x86 based OS’s virtualized.

You will have no issues developing for macOS for both architectures, and just because you are a developer does not mean you need to run VirtualBox, Parallels or any other x86 virtualization solution.

Sorry you feel scammed, Apple is scamming us by lying!!!!

Where's the lie?

If you are a developer, certainly you've looked at Apple's About the Rosetta Translation Environment article, which explicitly states (bullet point emboldening mine):

What Can’t Be Translated?

Rosetta can translate most Intel-based apps, including apps that contain just-in-time (JIT) compilers. However, Rosetta doesn’t translate the following executables:

• Kernel extensions

• Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms

Rosetta translates all x86_64 instructions, but it doesn’t support the execution of some newer instruction sets and processor features, such as AVX, AVX2, and AVX512 vector instructions. If you include these newer instructions in your code, execute them only after verifying that they are available. For example, to determine if AVX512 vector instructions are available, use the sysctlbyname function to check the hw.optional.avx512f attribute.

That text is included in that article as of its first posting on March 10, 2021.

First, software developers (except for those developing Apple software) have never been a target audience for Apple. And starting with the first iMac in the late 90's Apple has always focused on the consumer market, with some nods to professional media users (photo, video, audio). But software developers and power users, not so much. Mostly because they became a 3 trillion dollar company (for a few days at least) by focusing on consumers. The non-technical users. They went from almost bankrupt in the mid-90's to the where they are today by the single consumer focus.

Re: Developers

The company I work for uses thousands of Macs and are starting to roll out M1 Pro Macs to developers (they also have even more Windows systems). The Mac in this instance is used to connect via ssh, VNC or Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection to company data centers (there are many large company data centers around the world) where there are tons of virtual machines running Linux, Solaris, AIX, Windows, and others. AIX and Solaris run on SPARC and PowerPC hardware that is para-virtualized.

The Macs are used to access those systems. And they are used to VPN into the work network, do email, Slack, web access, word processing, spreadsheets, project management, etc...

Some of our developers had been using Mac virtual machine software to run Windows. This group is out-of-luck, and will have to see about renting a Windows system in a data center, or get over their need for that 1 last Windows program they do not want to give up. The ones doing Linux development, have to switch to an ARM64 Linux implementation. The Solaris and AIX developers always had to do their work on real hardware.

And it is possible to use tools that edit locally on the Mac, but save the files on the remote systems. There are several programming editors (Vim, Emacs) as well as IDE packages that can use this concept, and even send remote commands for the compiles.

If you must run X86 code on your Mac, then maybe the UTM project will work for you.

https://mac.getutm.app

If Windows is your target, then Parallels can boot the Microsoft Surface Tablet version of Windows, and it has X86-64 emulation (not as good as Rosetta, but it works).

Otherwise, an older intel Mac, or an intel PC that you install your choice of operating system.

And referring back to MrHoffman's comments. I have lived through many architecture changes, from 1's complement 18'bit UNIVAC 418-III systems, 12 bit PDP-12 systems, 16 bit PDP-11 and Xerox Sigma 3 systems, Z80 systems, 32-bit VAX systems, 64-bit MIPS systems, 64-bit Alpha systems, Motorola 68000 Macs, PowerPC Macs, Intel Macs, and now a M1 Max Mac.

While ARM is a darling in hand held devices because of its low power, high performance curve, and data centers that want to cut power can cooling costs, as well as the current line of Macs, chances are in a number of years, something new will come out (quantum computers) that causes yet another shift in architecture.

dangoulet1 wrote:

For years Apple enthusiasts could run tools like VirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels, Bootcamp, docker, on their MacBooks.

Don't care, aside from Bootcamp they're third party products, you need to check with their vendors, not Apple.

If say something like Photoshop plain didn't work, it still wouldn't be Apple's responsibility to mention that.

This isn’t possible any longer. We’re not talking about incompatibility for a single app. Lol. We’re talking about many apps.

Let's see, Docker, Parallels and VMWare all run on Apple Silicon.

How would developers work on this thing?

Backend developers target x86 and not ARM. Most of their software would never run on ARM. I can’t count the number of times I’ve needed some programming library based on something written in C/C++/Haskell/or whatever and those things don’t run on ARM.

That's the single most ridiculous comment you've made.

Developers who target x86 may have issues.

There are a wide variety of developers who target ARM and myriad other CPU architectures that exist. The entire iOS and macOS developer communities see no difference when developing on Apple Silicon machines.

Most of the Linux user community is processor-agnostic as well, as is much of the web development world.

It matters little which processor a Python script or a PHP routine runs on unless it's specifically crafted to be CPU-dependent.

How would a devops engineer build stuff destined for the cloud? They don’t start in the cloud, they start locally.

There are multiple architectures supported in the cloud, so if you can't develop anywhere but locally, that's your issue.

I upgrade my computer every 3 years and was blown away when I learnt that Rosetta 2 didn’t truly solve the problem. If you look around the internet there are others struggling with this too and these folks are finding out the hard way after purchasing.

Thats like saying a Tesla buyer was confused when they went to the gas station to fill up.

How is this not misleading? There’s no headlines stating hey, remember how you used to use VMWare Fusion? How about Virtualbox or docker? Well those won’t work anymore. Instead they talk about how Rosetta 2 solves these issues without directly stating that.

Except for VirtualBox, they do.

As a user of a third party application, it is your responsibility to see if an app you require works on the machine you are considering.

This is like blaming Apple when your new computer comes with Monterey and your third party app only works on Big Sur.

I realize I’ve gone off, and I truly apologize. I’m totally bent about this. Apple is a great company with wonderful products, and the new MBP’s are not one of them anymore.

Your opinion, I think they are better than ever and I said it with my own personal money.

Also, who needs Apple silicon for graphics? Oh they talk a big game but what company makes the best GPU for machine learning and gaming? It’s not Apple and not AMD. It’s nvidia. Almost all ML libraries work with CUDA.

If you're doing that, hey, go crazy.

Little ML was done on laptops anyway because of the huge amount of heat the GPUs in the Intel world generate.

In short, for the vast majority of people, the M1 MBPs are a huge leap forward.

For others it's why the 27" 5K iMac and Mac Pro are still stuck on Intel for now.

Or you can use UTM, it's based on Qemu and it can run both ARM en X86 on an Apple Silicon M1.