Post B5i283GrTdy0jJWnRY by toader@fosstodon.org
(DIR) More posts by toader@fosstodon.org
(DIR) Post #B5hnJ4jAu2sX7XZNgW by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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What's the go to for virtualization on apple silicon macs?Requirements:* Free or one time purchase, not subscriptionware* Can run macos guests with full metal support* CLI for spawning, terminating, snapshotting, and revertingStretch goals:* Can run arm64 Linux guests with vulkan support
(DIR) Post #B5hnNB7P5HBK6ErJiK by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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It looks like the players so far are vmware fusion, UTM, and parallels
(DIR) Post #B5hnYlaznpTYPwE5WS by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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@petrillic do you get accelerated metal graphics in the guest?
(DIR) Post #B5ho6jsAiOYyv4SXgG by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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@petrillic if the guest has metal i can get vulkan via MoltenVK
(DIR) Post #B5hruj803dhyx3OH8y by dngrs@chaos.social
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@azonenberg tangent, afaik NOT meeting the GPU criteria, but might be interesting to know for related projects:https://github.com/apple/container
(DIR) Post #B5hs5hxElGjmUsanPk by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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Quick summary from preliminary doc reading having not tried any of them yet:* VMware does not appear to support virtualizing macos apple silicon guests* Parallels appears to be subscriptionware but will probably do what I want if I buy the pro edition (seems the lower tier doesn't have the CLI)* UTM is free and seems to support MacOS guests, so I'm gonna try to install it and see what happens
(DIR) Post #B5hsXxsBAdhPyXhUlk by pmdj@mstdn.social
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@azonenberg FWIW, I use the super-basic ‘macosvm’ CLI* for spawning my ephemeral arm64 macOS CI runners.All the options you listed and this one just use Apple’s own Virtualization.framework for virtualising arm64 macOS. So feature wise they have parity for this specific purpose. Other guest OSes are usually implemented via the lower level Hypervisor.framework so will vary greatly in features.Metal works in VZ.fwk, but only baseline features.* https://github.com/s-u/macosvm
(DIR) Post #B5hscXTsir0lZQW6KG by natevw@toot.cafe
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@azonenberg my understanding is that everything that supports macOS guests these days is based on (Apple's own) same Virtualization framework and thus all inherit the same constraints re. GPU (and USB) passthrough.[edit to clarify: UTM which I like/recommend does use *multiple* back ends and so for other e.g. Linux/Windows guests it can use Qemu which itself has multiple potential backends of its own which are less limited. other hypervisors probably similar story but all converging for macOS]
(DIR) Post #B5hvle8Xe4lcgKZN32 by PeterSommerlad@mastodon.social
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virtualbox?
(DIR) Post #B5hwTxD85deka2qK4u by rfc6919@aus.social
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@azonenberg i’m pretty sure if you stop paying the parallels subscription you just lose updates, but whatever you have installed keeps working
(DIR) Post #B5hwYQOjVyWiGFP07c by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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@rfc6919 if so then that's fine. i'll have to check but utm is free so i'll try it first
(DIR) Post #B5i283GrTdy0jJWnRY by toader@fosstodon.org
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@azonenberg Definitely try UTM first. Last time I tried macOS guests, tjey looked GPU accelerated, but didn’t dig in the features. Linux guests have the usual QEMU backends, some of which are GPU enabled, but might be beta-ish. Bonus points for linux guests, if you don’t require QEMU for them: you can use rosetta, so you can run x86 apps/libs also in Linux. There is also libkrun which advertises gpu accelerated containers on macOS via venus. Haven’t tried this tho.
(DIR) Post #B5i2Ramz58DWBcs38q by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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@toader I already have a big iron x86 machine to run x86 stuff. The only reason I have the mac mini is to test on MacOS.But I might try qemu with Linux guests since we do not currently have an ARM64 Linux test environment and it'll probably run faster virtualized than software emulated on x86.
(DIR) Post #B5i4kdmcNEjEsnuUOe by toader@fosstodon.org
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@azonenberg Definitely give it a try, never not a good reason to also have ARM64 support. Regarding performance, my M4 Mini is giving a lot of Ryzen boxes a run for their money in Vivado synthesis (in a Linux VM, ‘emulating’ x86 via Rosetta). The single core perf is that good and virtualization is seamless. UTM is stable, and also has a server for managing VMs via an API.
(DIR) Post #B5i4rUmIFlzqys1jOa by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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@toader The mac mini has 16GB of RAM and the Xeon box has 512. I'm not running any VMs on the mac that don't actually *need* apple silicon.But yeah, one mac runner and one Debian arm64 runner or something, taking turns because I probably won't have the RAM to do both simultaneously, is probably doable.
(DIR) Post #B5i7kwbgggO57sdMXY by ndantas@masto.pt
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@azonenberg take a look to tart
(DIR) Post #B5iiOMgxEc8LfeC5Zo by tuna_@mastodon.social
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@azonenberg There is also VirtualBuddy https://github.com/insidegui/VirtualBuddy
(DIR) Post #B5ijfR1gTNOjzTarSK by grumpybozo@toad.social
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@azonenberg I’ve got a working FreeBSD 14 arm64 VM on VMWare Fusion on a M2Pro Mac Studio, so I think you’re wrong about that.
(DIR) Post #B5ijusqpIpwKdDsiXI by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
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@grumpybozo yes but do you have a macos vm? That's what i need... Aarch64 Mac VM on apple silicon mac
(DIR) Post #B5ikfG3fLrU7vb04CO by grumpybozo@toad.social
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@azonenberg Ack, no. Sorry for the noise.