VirtualPC on Apple Silicon - Meh.

Oracle has released a beta of VirtualPC running on Apple’s ARM (“Apple Silicon”) machines, like this MacBook Air 13.6". The most recent version is 7.0.8, for whatever reason they have not pushed 7.0.10 or later.

About VirtualBox window screenshot

Download it here (look for the "macOSArm64.dmg" file): https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.0.8/

I tried it out with both the “Intel and AMD x86_64” and “ARM® aarch64” spins of Fedora Workstation 39 (in both instances using the Live ISO image). Since I’m running a base model Air, I gave each machine 2GB RAM, 1 CPU, and a 15GB disk image - should be enough for a proof of concept.

The Intel image was a bust, though it did initially start to boot. The logfile wasn’t much help:

00:00:59.847132 !!
00:00:59.847132 !! {vmsvga3dctx}
00:00:59.847132 !!
00:00:59.847154 !!
00:00:59.847154 !! {vmsvga3dsfc}
00:00:59.847154 !!
00:00:59.847155 !!
00:00:59.847155 !! {vmsvga3dsurf}
00:00:59.847155 !!
00:00:59.847155 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Screenshot: Critical error trying to boot the Fedora Intel Live ISO

The ARM version was a bust, too, though this time it was complaining that no bootable media was found. Same result with different spins (Fedora-Workstation-Live-aarch64-39-1.5-respin.iso and Fedora-LXQt-Live-aarch64-39-1.5-respin.iso). Disappointing.

VMware Fusion (VMware Fusion Player – Personal Use License) can apparently support ARM Linux presently, I’ll try playing with that next.

If all else fails, UTM (an extension of QEMU) can emulate just about anything, but there will of course be a performance hit.