VMWare Fusion 13 Pro Still won't run X86 Windows or Linux OS

[yhu2008]

SO what's this purposes of having this Fusion 13 Pro to be intrduced to Apple Silicon M serise chips laptop users? I can't install any OS to the VM on MacBook M1. Unless I'm going to buy the INTEL chip laptop back.

Any solutions for this? 

[scott28tt]

Fusion runs x86 OSes on Intel Macs, and it runs ARM OSes on M1/2/3 Macs, virtualisation is not the same as emulation.

.You can build ARM versions of Windows 11 or various different Linux distributions.

[ColoradoMarmot]

There are no solutions.  It's like trying to run a gasoline car on diesel fuel.

UTM can emulate x86, but the performance is terrible - unusable.

There are ARM versions of Linux and Windows.  Run one of those.  Windows has a built-in x86 emulator that allows most intel software to run inside the guest (performance is mixed).

[Technogeezer]

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@yhu2008 wrote:

SO what's this purposes of having this Fusion 13 Pro to be intrduced to Apple Silicon M serise chips laptop users? I can't install any OS to the VM on MacBook M1. Unless I'm going to buy the INTEL chip laptop back.

Any solutions for this? 

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As @ColoradoMarmot says, the purpose is to virtualize ARM architecture operating systems like Windows 11 ARM and arm64 Linux.  

Unfortunately you have fallen victim to the perception that all Macs have Intel chips and can run any operating system under virtualization that runs on an Intel CPU - and that includes older versions of macOS.  Apple is not in the business of making Intel-compatible systems.. They make Macs - with whatever CPUs fit their business and feature requirements. History has shown us that Apple will switch CPUs on Macs whenever they find that chip vendors can't deliver what they want (Motorola, IBM, and now Intel have found that out).

If you have to blame anyone, blame Apple for the decision to switch away from Intel CPUs. Don't blame VMware (or Parallels either because they're in the same boat). They didn't write an emulator that would allow you to run Intel VMs with acceptable performance because a) they're not in the CPU emulation business, and b) it's not technologically feasible.  The state of emulation is that you can't get decent performance when emulating another CPU architecture - especially one as complex and different as Intel x86/x64.

The only reason Rosetta works as well as it does is that is solves a simpler problem. It works with user-space application code that doesn't have all the complexities of needing low-level hardware knowledge and privileged instructions that an operating system requires. 

[RDPetruska]

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@yhu2008 wrote:

SO what's this purposes of having this Fusion 13 Pro to be intrduced to Apple Silicon M serise chips laptop users? I can't install any OS to the VM on MacBook M1. Unless I'm going to buy the INTEL chip laptop back.

Any solutions for this? 

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The purpose is that Apple suckered you into buying their latest hype with only stating the positives in their ads and reviews.  All they think users care about is speed/power and portability.  They have **never** cared about compatibility with the rest of the computing world, nor low cost.  If you need to run Wintel software, your safest and best bet has *always* been to get a PC.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Yep.  I did exactly that last year - got a real gaming PC with a 4090.  Runs circles around anything that Apple makes, and runs all my wintel stuff perfectly.  Win 11 virtualized does a darn good job for most things - we did our taxes that way this year for example.  But for anything that is either complex, or performance dependent there's nothing like native.

[Technogeezer]

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@RDPetruska wrote:

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The purpose is that Apple suckered you into buying their latest hype with only stating the positives in their ads and reviews.  All they think users care about is speed/power and portability.  They have **never** cared about compatibility with the rest of the computing world, nor low cost.  If you need to run Wintel software, your safest and best bet has *always* been to get a PC.

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I agree and disagree on some points you make. What you call "suckered you", I call mis-placed expectations on what a Mac is. Too many people looked at the Mac as their primary tool to run Windows because of its "cool design" or hardware quality.. Unfortunately the use of Apple Silicon ARM chips shattered those expectations. 

The Linux world is actually in much better shape than Windows. The Linux kernel developers and distro maintainers have done a pretty good job of parity between Linux on Intel and Linux on ARM. A lot of the applications I see within Linux Intel distros are available on Linux ARM. Microsoft just hasn't convinced developers to recompile code to run native on Windows 11 ARM.

I will also agree that Apple doesn't care about compatibility as much as the rest of the industry. Running any Intel operating system or Windows applications is just one example. Even in the macOS world, the road is littered with features that they've removed from macOS (e.g. 32-bit application support).

Remember, the Mac was originally positioned back in 1984 as an appliance, not a collection of interchangeable parts like the PC became. Apple still seems to work that way to this day.

Agreed that the best way to run Intel VMs is on a PC (either Windows or Linux). A wise man once told me: nothing helps virtual like real. 

[treee]

@RDPetruska please refrain from posting disinformation and keep things civil. What you are stating is factual wrong as there are ample examples of Apple using standards and thus caring about compatibility with the rest of the world. There are also ample examples of the rest of the world not caring. Just take a look at the implementation of stuff like Thunderbolt, USB-C and ODF. Also keep in mind that macOS still has their UNIX v3 certification and works with many unix/linux tooling. There is a very good reason why loads of people from the unix/linux world are using Macs instead of non-Macs with, say, Linux. If we take a real objective look at the world of IT then it becomes very very very clear that no party has ever had compatibility with the rest of the world in mind.

The real solution to the OPs problem is rather simple: use the arm64 version of whatever OS you are planning to use with VMware Fusion. Keep in mind that Fusion is virtualisation which means that the virtual machines it creates mimic the actual hardware it is running on. With Apple Silicon Macs that architecture is arm64 (also know as aarch64). All of the major Linux distributions, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and even Windows have arm64 versions you can try (there are iso's to download, Windows can even be done through a wizard in VMware Fusion provided you run the latest Fusion version).

As stated by @Technogeezer unix/linux software runs perfectly fine on arm64 which comes to no surprise as that world has been running on arm64 for several years now (the Raspberry Pi has played a huge role in this but also things like AWS Graviton). Windows is different, there isn't that much that runs arm64...yet. Windows does have an x86 (bit 32 and 64 bit) emulation layer allowing you to run Intel software on it. Apparently it doesn't work as good as Rosetta 2 on a Mac does but it works. The arm64 ecosystem on Windows, like unix/linux, is growing.