Parallels can finally run x86 versions of Windows or Linux on Apple Silicon – Ars Technica
“Early technology preview” is promising but has lots of limitations for now.
Virtualization software like Parallels and VMware Fusion give Mac owners the ability to run Windows and Linux on top of macOS, but for Apple Silicon Macs, that support was limited to the Arm-based versions of those operating systems. And while Windows and Linux both support some level of x86-to-Arm app translation that attempts to maintain compatibility with most software, there are still plenty of things that demand an Intel or AMD processor with the x86 instruction set.Last week, Parallels released a new update that partially resolves this problem: Users of Parallels Desktop Pro 20.2.0 now have access to x86 operating systems via an “early technology preview” of Parallels’ “proprietary emulation engine.”The technology preview is currently limited to certain 64-bit versions of Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2019 and 2022. Parallels also says it has tested several UEFI-compatible Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 22.04.5, Kubuntu 24.04.1, Lubuntu 24.04.1, and Debian versions 12.4 to 12.8. Fedora will install, but it’s unstable. 32-bit versions of operating systems, as well as older versions of Windows like Windows 7 or 8, aren’t supported.For Windows 11 and supported Linux distros, you can run existing virtual machines using the technology preview, but you can’t set up new ones—useful for anyone migrating from an Intel Mac with virtual machines they’d like to keep. If you’re trying to set up a new virtual machine, the only officially supported operating systems are Windows Server 2022 and Windows 10 21H2, though there are workarounds available for Windows 10 22H2 and Windows Server 2019.You won’t be able to set up fresh copies of Windows 11 or some versions of Linux because the technology preview doesn’t support SSE4.2, additional CPU instructions that became common in Intel and AMD processors in the early 2010s. This also means that Windows 11 24H2 VMs are entirely unsupported, since the 24H2 update requires these CPU instructions to work at all.Parallels notes that these operating systems currently run “really slow” due to the overhead required for translation. Windows takes between two and seven minutes to boot, depending on the speed of your Mac, and “the responsiveness of the operating system is low.” Rather than attempting to multi-task, Parallels says you should close the app you’re using before trying to open another one.Other limitations include a lack of USB passthrough support, no sound, support for just one virtual CPU core and 8GB of RAM, and a lack of support for nested virtualization (which could affect compatibility with features like the Windows Subsystem for Linux). Parallels also says that the translation overhead requires a lot of system resources—for example, “an Intel-based Windows 10 VM with 4GBs of RAM assigned will take 8GBs of your Mac’s memory.”While Apple’s Rosetta 2 generally does a good job of running Intel Mac apps on Apple Silicon Macs, Apple doesn’t support running entire x86 operating systems using Rosetta. The Virtualization Framework built into macOS likewise only supports Arm-compatible operating systems. Though limited, Parallels’ support for running x86 operating systems is a unique feature that other companies haven’t been able to offer yet. It’s also a bit of a blast from the past for longtime Mac users—back in the PowerPC days, Mac owners also had to rely on third-party emulation software like Connectix’s Virtual PC for running x86-based operating systems and apps.Ars Technica has been separating the signal from
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