When will bootcamp come to M1 macs?

johntdowney wrote:

So which is it, Microsoft has spent a ton of time creating a developer preview for an ARM-based Windows, or "they have no intention of releasing Windows for ARM. Ever."?

A developer preview isn't something you spent time creating if you have no intention of an ultimate release.

Microsoft's new Surface computers runs Windows ARM. Microsoft has not made Windows ARM available as a production release and you can not purchase it other than with it already installed on a Surface computer.

If you have an issue with Microsoft's operating system development and marketing process you can contact Microsoft.

There's no reason to believe it will ever happen.

Find an ARM instruction set based Linux and you can run it in a virtual machine. Parallels or UTM <https://mac.getutm.app> or maybe VMware Fusion (beta)

There is a project to boot Linux native on M1 processor

https://www.corellium.com/blog/linux-m1

It is still a work in progress.

What about for running linux?

The original question was, "when". I mostly aim to point out Microsoft seems to be positioning an offering since the insider build also supports other Qualcomm chipsets as well.

You can follow the progress of Asahi linux https://asahilinux.org/. It's still in early stage and lack of support for many hardware features, but the CPU performance is amazing!

Microsoft has made it clear that they have no intention of releasing Windows for ARM. Ever.

Those tons of users running Windows for ARM are largely doing it in violation of Microsoft's license terms.

Windows for ARM is a developer preview. It is not legal to use it for production work, or even casual gaming, etc.

mikethemistymay wrote:

Hmmm... explain Surface Pro X.

You are conflating two things, the Surface ARM comuter and the OS.. The public can and does buy the newer Surface computers with the Microsoft SQ® 1 and Microsoft SQ® 2 custom ARM processors with Windows ARM installed. The public can not buy Windows 11 ARM OS separately from Microsoft.

And yet there are insider builds published, unlike macOS. Seems like solid planning for post-exclusivity with Qualcomm while supporting interested parties. "Stated intentions" are by no means binding.

this is actually a good decision on Windows side, as for me the need to have access to a Windows partition with 100% hardware support is important for programming and I can't afford to buy both mac (which I prefer for most work) and windows machine that I only need for like 30% of my work. So, in light of M1 not supporting bootcamp, I am sure I am not the only one who will buy a windows machine as the next computer, because M1 mac just does not cut it for me at all. Sorry. After 4 macs and all iOS devices, I will go to the Windows side of **** because Apple makes me and MS sees this as an opportunity to get a few new users and make some sales. Sucks, but after 12 years, I will be leaving Apple computer user base because of this.

Most likely because if you want hardware level access it will not work in a VM. For example running a PC game with the full GPU power of the M1 chip is not possible in Parallels. Perhaps someone else can better explain.

So which is it, Microsoft has spent a ton of time creating a developer preview for an ARM-based Windows, or "they have no intention of releasing Windows for ARM. Ever."?

A developer preview isn't something you spent time creating if you have no intention of an ultimate release.

Boot Camp is nothing more than a sophisticated partition manager (with some added features that are optional, i.e making a pre-packaged Windows installer with the proper Mac drivers); that's it -- so to say it doesn't support Linux is like saying your dining room table doesn't support the use of paper plates. Since the most common use is to run Windows natively on Intel hardware, Apple has added a ton of niceties to make it easier, including downloading and installing drivers for the Apple-unique hardware. I can just as easily boot an Intel Mac from a Linux installer CD/DVD and use its partition manager to move the MacOS partition around (I've done this countless times).

As for the support, I have first-hand confirmation from Apple that any modern OS can be used from a secondary partition (be it created via Bootcamp or MS-DOS's FDISK). The meat of the whole operation is whether or not the OS can identify the Mac hardware and load the appropriate drivers (which up until around 2018 or so has become more challenging).

I've installed several Linux distros on my Intel Mac Mini last year. You don't need Bootcamp for it.

And in January it was reported that someone has successfully installed Ubuntu on an M1 Mac. By now I've heard of at least another version of Linux running on M1 Macs.

Bootcamp on Intel Macs doesn't support Linux, why should Apple bother with it on M1 Macs?