Ask HN: Best tool for running a Linux desktop VM on a Apple Silicon Mac?
2 comments
I use UTM without any issue (running Windows 11)... but for what it's worth VMware announced both Workstation and Fusion are now free for Personal Use:
https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2024/05/vmware-workstat...
You can also buy a Commercial subscription for $120/year
https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2024/05/vmware-workstat...
You can also buy a Commercial subscription for $120/year
I would have to purchase a subscription.
Any experience with VMWare Fusion or Parallels?
The problem I had with UTM was that occasionally I would attempt to switch back to the guest, and I would find it "dead": unresponsive, no visual output. I sought help from the community on debugging the issue, but I could not determine what was occuring. My use case is perhaps not common, so not many people have run into the same issue with such a new project.
Any experience with VMWare Fusion or Parallels?
The problem I had with UTM was that occasionally I would attempt to switch back to the guest, and I would find it "dead": unresponsive, no visual output. I sought help from the community on debugging the issue, but I could not determine what was occuring. My use case is perhaps not common, so not many people have run into the same issue with such a new project.
Linux support on Apple Silicon VMWare Fusion has been a bit rocky. I have only recently got an ARM version of Ubuntu installed and running.
I definitely suggest that you sign up for the Free personal version to evaluate whether it meets your needs.
That said, support for Intel VMWare Fusion was fantastic and I’m pretty sure had all the features you mentioned. One area to evaluate is whether you are happy with the way keybindings are mapped between the two systems.
I definitely suggest that you sign up for the Free personal version to evaluate whether it meets your needs.
That said, support for Intel VMWare Fusion was fantastic and I’m pretty sure had all the features you mentioned. One area to evaluate is whether you are happy with the way keybindings are mapped between the two systems.
I’ve had no issues with Parallels, but their supports a bit rough.
I am a developer and my employer sent me a MacBook Pro with an Apple silicon processor. I love the Apple hardware, but I've never been fond of macOS. My plan is to run my preferred Debian setup in a VM. I will probably run an arm64 variant of Debian. This setup would allow me to fall back to macOS when necessary, and there are some programs I am required to run that do not support linux. At my employer, Macs are the standard issue workstations.
I have done a bit of research on the available tools. The main options that I am aware of are Parallels and VMWare Fusion. I also tested UTM (which is free and open source), but I ran into some bugs that I could not seem to resolve, and I am not willing to spend time fiddling. My employer is willing to cover the cost, so I am planning to use a commercial offering. However, I have not found many opinions on these tools from real people, with experience of real usage. I will be using this every work day, all day.
What do you recommend?
My requirements are as follows:
- Can run a Debian arm64 desktop as a guest.
- No artificial limitations on the resources that I can dedicate to the guest.
- Has a full screen mode and "pointer lock" feature, so that using the linux guest is completely immersive.
- Can run the guest in a windowed mode, for when I need to switch between the guest and the host.
- Supports sharing files, clipboard, devices.
- Works perfectly with suspend/hibernate.