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Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

macrumors.com

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Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#81

Post by stuxnet79 »

Retr0id wrote: post #57
stuxnet79 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the A18 Pro has the same ISA as the M-series chips then this may not be so straightforward. I am still hanging on to my 2020 Intel MBP for dear life because it is the only Apple device I own that allows me to run Ubuntu and Windows 11 on a VirtualBox VM.

As long as you're ok with arm64 guests, you can absolutely run both Ubuntu and Win11 VMs on M-series CPUs. Parallels also supports x86 guests via emulation.

How is the performance when emulating the x86 architecture via parallels?

Also is it possible to convert an existing x86 VM to arm64 or do I just have to rebuild all of my software from scratch? I always had the perception that the arm64 versions of Windows & Ubuntu have inferior support both in terms of userland software and device drivers.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#82

Post by gamblor956 »

simulator5g wrote: post #62
Aurornis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every thread about Windows on Hacker News includes claims about apps taking 30 seconds to launch, web pages taking 20 seconds to load, simple applications being unusable, and other extreme performance problems. These are puzzling for anyone (like me) who uses Windows at home without all of these extreme performance problems. That was until I realized how many reports are coming from people talking about their work la…

No this is not just an enterprise issue. I waited 10 seconds (I counted.) for a Windows Explorer context menu to open the other day. This is on a fully decked out system with an Ultra 9 cpu and a 4090 and 32gb of memory, and basically no apps running. I think I had 2 tabs in Edge? Windows is a shitshow these days.

I just tried to open the context menu in Windows Explorer. It showed up almost as soon as I released the mouse button, and I have a much slower CPU, older video card, and way less RAM then you do. I was also running 12 windows of Firefox with collectively 1000+ tabs (though only about 36 or loaded), Steam, a Unity game, and Microsoft Teams, plus a number of background programs.

If your Explorer context menu is taking more than a split second to load, there's something wrong with your hardware.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#83

Post by argsnd »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #76
garblegarble wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you elaborate what you mean by saying Linux on an M-series chip isn't straightforward? That's not been my experience, I (and lots of other devs) use it every day, Apple supports Linux via [0], and provides the ability to use Rosetta 2 within VMs to run legacy x86 binaries? 0: https://github.com/apple/container

Clearly I'm not as knowledgable about this as I thought I was. I already have a Ubuntu x86 VM running on an Intel Mac (inside VirtualBox). Same with Windows 11. Can this tool allow me to run both VMs in an Apple Silicon device in a performant way? Last I checked VirtualBox on Apple Silicon only permits the running of ARM64 guests. While I have a preference for VirtualBox I'd say I'm hypervisor agnostic. Really any wa…

Run ARM64 Linux and install Rosetta inside it. Even on the MacBook Neo it'll be faster than your 2020 Intel Mac.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#84

Post by Kwpolska »

> Windows 11 VM requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM to function

You can give it less. It may refuse to install, but even without using any workarounds, you can change the assigned RAM after installing and it will not refuse to boot. The minimum for Windows Server 2025 is 2 GB, and it’s basically the same OS (just with less bloat).

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#87

Post by bitwize »

gamblor956 wrote: post #78
zitterbewegung wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a novelty it will crush the low end of the PC market. No one cares if the next iteration will be better with 12GB of ram. The workloads that people say that 8GB can't handle will be ones that the actual users will either wait or tolerate. I've been noticing that people who review the Macbook Neo basically don't get the point [1] and just the headline of this article matters that VMs work and thats a big wi…

Most people run Windows just fine on cheap laptops with 4GB of RAM. These won't run Crysis, but they don't need to.

Windows doesn't run "just fine" on 4 GiB of RAM. I had a laptop with 6; Windows 10 became barely usable. If you want to run one, small, program at a time I think you'll be ok. Forget about web browsing; you'll get one tab and it'll be slow.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#89

Post by js2 »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #76
garblegarble wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you elaborate what you mean by saying Linux on an M-series chip isn't straightforward? That's not been my experience, I (and lots of other devs) use it every day, Apple supports Linux via [0], and provides the ability to use Rosetta 2 within VMs to run legacy x86 binaries? 0: https://github.com/apple/container

Clearly I'm not as knowledgable about this as I thought I was. I already have a Ubuntu x86 VM running on an Intel Mac (inside VirtualBox). Same with Windows 11. Can this tool allow me to run both VMs in an Apple Silicon device in a performant way? Last I checked VirtualBox on Apple Silicon only permits the running of ARM64 guests. While I have a preference for VirtualBox I'd say I'm hypervisor agnostic. Really any wa…

> Can this tool allow me to run both VMs in an Apple Silicon device in a performant way?

I use VMWare Fusion on an M1 Air to run ARM Windows. Windows is then able to run Windows x86-64 executables I believe through it's own Rosetta 2 like implementation. The main limitation is that you cannot use x86-64 drivers.

Similarly, ARM Linux VMs can use Rosetta 2 to run x86-64 binaries with excellent performance. For that I mostly use Rancher or podman which setup the Linux VM automatically and then use it to run Linux ARM containers. I don't recall if I've tried to run x86-64 Linux binaries inside an Linux ARM container. It might be a little trickier to get Rosetta 2 to work. It's been a long time since I tried to run a Linux x86-64 container.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#90

Post by alwillis »

Retr0id wrote: post #54
hu3 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native, no. That would cannibalise Apple services which is a huge source of revenue for them.

Have you confirmed this? I haven't seen anyone concretely describe the boot policy of the Neo yet (it should be an easy enough check for anyone who has one in-hand).

Like any other Apple Silicon Mac, you can't currently boot into Linux but Apple has native container support that Linux works on [1].

[1]: https://github.com/apple/container

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