Apple Wants People to Use Proprietary Software to Run "Linux"
-
Ars Technica ☛ Parallels can finally run x86 versions of Windows or Linux on Apple Silicon [Ed: Proprietary and untrustworthy, VirtualBox works OK]
Virtualization software like Parallels and VMware Fusion give Mac owners the ability to run Windows and Linux on top of macOS, but for Apple Silicon Macs, that support was limited to the Arm-based versions of those operating systems. And while Windows and Linux both support some level of x86-to-Arm app translation that attempts to maintain compatibility with most software, there are still plenty of things that demand an Intel or AMD processor with the x86 instruction set.
-
HowTo Geek ☛ Parallels Can Now Run x86 Windows and Linux on Apple Silicon Mac
Parallels Desktop, a popular application for running Windows and Linux virtual machines on Mac, can now run 64-bit x86 operating systems on Apple Silicon Macs. That means more versions of Windows and Linux can run on the latest M1, M2, M3, and M4 Mac computers.
Parallels Desktop, VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox, and other similar virtualization tools are only designed to run operating systems built on the same architecture as the host. When Mac computers used x86 Intel processors, a Mac could virtualize the regular PC versions of Windows and Linux (and many other operating systems) with a minimal performance hit. When Apple switched to the ARM-based Apple Silicon architecture with the first M1 Mac computers, virtualization was mostly limited to Windows 11 on ARM and some ARM Linux distributions.
-
AppleInsider ☛ New Parallels update trials x86 Linux & Windows VMs on Apple Silicon
For Linux users, this also gives an alternative to running Linux virtual machines through Rosetta.
Update
A couple more:
-
Lilbits: Emulating x86 Windows and Linux on macOS, Apple’s 2025 plans leaked, and Microsoft REALLY wants you to stop using Windows 10
Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 and the company really, really hopes you’ll either upgrade to Windows 11 (if you have an eligible PC) or buy a new computer running the newer version of the operating system. But millions of people probably won’t notice the end of support unless things start breaking… so it’s interesting to note that Microsoft will also end support for Office and Microsoft 365 apps on Windows 10 later this year. They’ll most likely continue to function for a while, but they’ll stop receiving security and feature updates and could suffer from performance and reliability issues over time.
-
Parallels Desktop 20.2 adds support for virtualizing x86 Windows and Linux systems for Macs with Apple Silicon processors
With the migration of Macs to Apple Silicon processors, these computers were not only left without the ability to install Windows natively, but virtualization of operating systems older than Windows 11 became even more difficult. Now Parallels Desktop 20.2 partially solves this problem.
-
Parallels adds x86 OS support for Fashion Company Apple Silicon — you can now run x86 backdoored Windows and GNU/Linux distros
Parallels Desktop introduces a new experimental feature that lets you install x86_64 operating systems on your Apple-silicon Mac.