Virtualization in Big Sur

That is true for Big Sur on M1 Macs. Not sure about the Intel Macs running Big Sur - you’d still need something like Parallels, but you’d be able to run x86 OSs for sure.

I believe this is the case. Parallels is working on update to allow x86 Windows I believe.

I can confirm this to be correct. I am using Parallels to run Windows 10 x86-64bit on Big Sur on my 2018 MacBook Pro

So far no luck getting Windows 10 ARM to run on Apple Silicon :frowning:

You need Qemm in order to do that, it needs to emulate a compatible processor and chipset. M1 SoC is not compatible with any of the SoCs that WoA runs on.

Parallels Desktop 16 for M1 Mac Technical Preview. The Parallels Engineering team created a new virtualization engine that uses the Apple M1 chip hardware-assisted virtualization and can run ARM-based OS in a virtual machine.

Yes, but… That means an M1 Linux or a virtual macOS instance.

WoA is actually Windows on Snapdragon. It is designed purely to run on Snapdragon and Snapdragon derived SoCs. The M1 has nothin in common with the Snapdragon, apart from the core ARM instruction set, everything else is unique.

It is the same as the Windows for IoT that ran on the Raspberry Pi, that won’t run on the Snapdragon WoA machines or the M1 either.

ARM is very different to Intel/AMD, you need to tailor the OS for the specific SoC being used.

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Windows10_InsiderPreview_Client_ARM64_en-us_20231.VHDX is what we are instructed to use with the new Parallels Technical Preview. The VHDX is recognized, installs, and Windows 10 does run however things go downhill if we apply any available OS updates. Sticking with the base install will allow running Office365 apps and the Edge browser.

Update: After further tweaks, I was able to get Windows updates installed and the VM still seems stable at this point.

Ah, ok. That makes more sense.

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