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We don’t plan to support installing or running x86 VMs on Macs with Apple silicon. What about x86 emulation? We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M

We don’t plan to support installing or running x86 VMs on Macs with Apple silicon. What about x86 emulation? We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M1 Macs. It makes total sense… If Apple can emulate x86 with Rosetta 2, surely VMware can do something too, right? Well, the short answer is that there isn’t exactly much business value relative to the engineering effort that is required, at least for the time being. For now, we’re laser focused on making Arm Linux VMs on Apple silicon a delight to use. So, to be a bit blunt, running x86 operating systems on Apple silicon is not something we are planning to deliver with this project. Installing Windows or Linux from an x86 ISO, for example, will not work. https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2021/04/fusion-on-apple-silicon-progress-update.html https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2021/04/fusion-on-apple-...

ecf 5y ago
What do you expect after they fired everyone working on Fusion and outsourced to India? It’s 100% possible to implement this, VMWare is just a second-rate virtualization platform these days. Don’t buy their product. Ever. https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/27/vmware_fusion_and_workstation_development_team_fired/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/27/vmware_fusion_and_wor...
- eddieroger 5y ago
  That's an unnecessarily xenophobic way of saying what the article does, which is that VMWare has decided to shift their focus to server virtualization at the cost of desktop virtualization. They're a business, and if they're making more money from one product line than the other, it's their choice to abandon the one. Don't buy the product if you don't like that, sure, but there's no reason to disparage outsourcing as the problem here.
  - ecf 5y ago
    Xenophobia has nothing to do with it. It’s just a matter of fact they fired/restructured/outsourced, whatever the hell you want to call it, so they could hire cheaper developers to simply maintain the product. VMWare would almost certainly offer this capability if it wouldn’t require the outsourced team 2x, 3x, …, 10x the amount of time it would would have taken the team who originally built the software.
    - sithadmin 5y ago
      You're completely off the mark. Fusion doesn't support x86 workloads on top of ARM largely because the ARM fork of ESXi doesn't support x86 workloads on top of ARM (and AFAIK, there's no future plans to, either). Fusion and Workstation inherit most of their underlying capabilities from ESXi. Barring a few functionality/usability flourishes unique to workstation/desktop use cases...if ESXi doesn't do it, Fusion and Workstation won't.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- sithadmin 5y ago
  The particular event that article references was part of a long term restructuring. Presently, there are many US, European, and Indian developers that still contribute to Workstation and Fusion. There's also significant overlap 'under the hood' with the ESXi code base. As for VMware's platform being second rate - there's still not really a lot of serious competition in the on-prem world, especially if any kind of scale, extreme performance needs or operational complexity is required. Nitro certainly runs circles around it in some regards, but that's not really an option that's on the table for big on-prem shops.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
stefan_ 5y ago
That seems like a bold move. I would have expected that 90% wanted a Fusion exclusively to be able to run x86 operating systems.
- vintagedave 5y ago
  Very much. I have a bunch of Windows x64 VMs that I do not want to convert to ARM (even just for the time it would take to migrate over to new VMs), plus a x64 Windows 7 VM. The value of virtual machines is to be able to virtualise a specific platform! That Win7 machine has software that needs to keep running. There is no Win10 porting or equivalent.
- protomyth 5y ago
  That would be the only reason I would continue to pay for the product. Prepping a VM on my desktop to move into VSphere or running an older Mac OS to run 32-bit software are my use cases.
  - mirekrusin 5y ago
    x86 is dying in front of our eyes. I've been using M1 exclusively for work for couple of months. I was a bit sceptical, initially I thought tons of stuff will not work. But all except one thing works perfectly. That one thing being mssql server. Microsoft provides azure flavoured ARM docker image for mssql but it's shit slow - so slow I can't use it for development. So I'm running Ubuntu on Ryzen in the background (no monitor, just multipass/docker/k8s <<btw. multipass is awsome to spin vms using local dhcp - vms just feel like physical boxes>>). Once Microsoft provides mssql docker image for ARM, I'm ready to drop all Intel/AMD heaters, maybe after winter season? ps. currently 2 out of 459 processes on my desktop are running in x86 emulation; sourcetree and some speech synthesis thing.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Conversely, I got an M1 machine for work and I've found that it's pretty useless unless your workload has been specifically tuned for it (like YouTube browsing or Twitter scrolling). There's no way in hell I'm using Rosetta to compile my x86 binaries, especially on a professional basis.
IncRnd 5y ago
> So, to be a bit blunt, running x86 operating systems on Apple silicon is not something we are planning to deliver with this project. Installing Windows or Linux from an x86 ISO, for example, will not work. I have to question, then, what is Fusion meant to do? I have primarily used it to install x86 OSes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rudian 5y ago
They wrote that. I read “We’re about to close shop because we couldn’t figure this out.” Parallel’s icon literally has a Windows logo in it.
- Clubber 5y ago
  I don't think Parallels emulates x86 windows either, does it?
rsync 5y ago
"We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M1 Macs." Sort of like Ford gets asked regularly about driving their cars on interstate highways ? This is not a fringe feature or some weird corner-case ... this is the reason people buy your product.
- whydid 5y ago
  Right? Their response comes off a bit arrogant.
  - soneil 5y ago
    Probably a lot less arrogant than it sounds. They probably share a whole lot of tooling between platforms. Emulation just isn’t in their skill set anywhere. Desktop is a niche for VMware, and Mac a niche within that. It seems pretty straightforward that perhaps this product doesn’t pay for a whole new engineering skill set.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ecf 5y ago

What do you expect after they fired everyone working on Fusion and outsourced to India? It’s 100% possible to implement this, VMWare is just a second-rate virtualization platform these days. Don’t buy their product. Ever. https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/27/vmware_fusion_and_workstation_development_team_fired/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/27/vmware_fusion_and_wor...

eddieroger 5y ago
That's an unnecessarily xenophobic way of saying what the article does, which is that VMWare has decided to shift their focus to server virtualization at the cost of desktop virtualization. They're a business, and if they're making more money from one product line than the other, it's their choice to abandon the one. Don't buy the product if you don't like that, sure, but there's no reason to disparage outsourcing as the problem here.
- ecf 5y ago
  Xenophobia has nothing to do with it. It’s just a matter of fact they fired/restructured/outsourced, whatever the hell you want to call it, so they could hire cheaper developers to simply maintain the product. VMWare would almost certainly offer this capability if it wouldn’t require the outsourced team 2x, 3x, …, 10x the amount of time it would would have taken the team who originally built the software.
  - sithadmin 5y ago
    You're completely off the mark. Fusion doesn't support x86 workloads on top of ARM largely because the ARM fork of ESXi doesn't support x86 workloads on top of ARM (and AFAIK, there's no future plans to, either). Fusion and Workstation inherit most of their underlying capabilities from ESXi. Barring a few functionality/usability flourishes unique to workstation/desktop use cases...if ESXi doesn't do it, Fusion and Workstation won't.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
sithadmin 5y ago
The particular event that article references was part of a long term restructuring. Presently, there are many US, European, and Indian developers that still contribute to Workstation and Fusion. There's also significant overlap 'under the hood' with the ESXi code base. As for VMware's platform being second rate - there's still not really a lot of serious competition in the on-prem world, especially if any kind of scale, extreme performance needs or operational complexity is required. Nitro certainly runs circles around it in some regards, but that's not really an option that's on the table for big on-prem shops.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

stefan_ 5y ago

That seems like a bold move. I would have expected that 90% wanted a Fusion exclusively to be able to run x86 operating systems.

vintagedave 5y ago
Very much. I have a bunch of Windows x64 VMs that I do not want to convert to ARM (even just for the time it would take to migrate over to new VMs), plus a x64 Windows 7 VM. The value of virtual machines is to be able to virtualise a specific platform! That Win7 machine has software that needs to keep running. There is no Win10 porting or equivalent.
protomyth 5y ago
That would be the only reason I would continue to pay for the product. Prepping a VM on my desktop to move into VSphere or running an older Mac OS to run 32-bit software are my use cases.
- mirekrusin 5y ago
  x86 is dying in front of our eyes. I've been using M1 exclusively for work for couple of months. I was a bit sceptical, initially I thought tons of stuff will not work. But all except one thing works perfectly. That one thing being mssql server. Microsoft provides azure flavoured ARM docker image for mssql but it's shit slow - so slow I can't use it for development. So I'm running Ubuntu on Ryzen in the background (no monitor, just multipass/docker/k8s <<btw. multipass is awsome to spin vms using local dhcp - vms just feel like physical boxes>>). Once Microsoft provides mssql docker image for ARM, I'm ready to drop all Intel/AMD heaters, maybe after winter season? ps. currently 2 out of 459 processes on my desktop are running in x86 emulation; sourcetree and some speech synthesis thing.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Conversely, I got an M1 machine for work and I've found that it's pretty useless unless your workload has been specifically tuned for it (like YouTube browsing or Twitter scrolling). There's no way in hell I'm using Rosetta to compile my x86 binaries, especially on a professional basis.

IncRnd 5y ago

> So, to be a bit blunt, running x86 operating systems on Apple silicon is not something we are planning to deliver with this project. Installing Windows or Linux from an x86 ISO, for example, will not work. I have to question, then, what is Fusion meant to do? I have primarily used it to install x86 OSes.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rudian 5y ago

They wrote that. I read “We’re about to close shop because we couldn’t figure this out.” Parallel’s icon literally has a Windows logo in it.

Clubber 5y ago
I don't think Parallels emulates x86 windows either, does it?

rsync 5y ago

"We get asked regularly about running x86 VMs on M1 Macs." Sort of like Ford gets asked regularly about driving their cars on interstate highways ? This is not a fringe feature or some weird corner-case ... this is the reason people buy your product.

whydid 5y ago
Right? Their response comes off a bit arrogant.
- soneil 5y ago
  Probably a lot less arrogant than it sounds. They probably share a whole lot of tooling between platforms. Emulation just isn’t in their skill set anywhere. Desktop is a niche for VMware, and Mac a niche within that. It seems pretty straightforward that perhaps this product doesn’t pay for a whole new engineering skill set.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]