Yousaf Nabi YOU54F

How to run Windows on Mac

We're going to run Windows 11 IoT (ARM) on Mac M1 (ARM) using the native binary translation, thanks to up-to-date version of qemu which has native hardware support.

Prerequisites

Install qemu and required tools (coreutils - we need truncate/gtruncate, dd/gdd CLI tools, samba - to share files between host and guest VM).

$ brew install qemu coreutils samba

Hurdles of macOS distribution

Code signing
Notarization
Quarantine
Distribution vehicles
Notes

Code signing

Running Third Party Kernel Extensions on Virtualization Framework macOS Guest VMs

As of macOS 12 (Monterey), Apple's Virtualization framework has nice support for macOS guest virtual machines, but with severe limitations: For example you can't install a macOS guest on Intel Macs, install guests with newer versions of macOS than the host, copy and paste between the host and the guest, or install third party kernel extensions in the guest. As usual for Apple, the functionality they do support is nicely implemented, but they've left out so much that the result is only marginally useful -- at least compared to

📖 This guide has moved

The maintained version now lives at Thunderbolt Networking, part of scyto/homelab-docs.

Questions or troubleshooting? Continue the conversation here — a Q&A discussion where replies thread properly, answers can be marked, and everything is searchable. The 388 comments below stay exactly where they are as an archive.

📖 This guide has moved

The maintained version now lives at ProxMox Cluster - Soup-to-Nutz, part of scyto/homelab-docs.

Questions or troubleshooting? Continue the conversation here — a Q&A discussion where replies thread properly, answers can be marked, and everything is searchable. The 51 comments below stay exactly where they are as an archive.

Install ArchLinux UEFI on M1 Virtualization.framework

1. Preparation

ISO gentoo aarch64 installation

tart a command line to create and run Virtual Machine in command line.

2. Setup

Create virtual machine with tart and boot into Gentoo Linux

tart create —linux archlinux
tart run --disk ./install-arm64-minimal-20221218T221711Z.iso archlinux

Guide updated to use the official installation .iso from Microsoft, which finally became available in Dec. 2024! For the VHDX disk image based guide check an earlier version of this gist.

When following this guide on a host not capable of aarch64 virtualization, replace -cpu host -accel kvm with -cpu neoverse-n1 (faster to emulate then -cpu max).

Download the installation .iso from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11arm64. Win11_24H2_EnglishInternational_Arm64.iso is known to work.
Download the the latest virtio-win.iso from https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/latest-virtio/.
Create a disk image for the Windows installation, e.g. qemu-img create -f qcow2 win11.qcow2 80G
Start the installation with generic (ramfb for display, usb-storage for .isos) as well as virtio (virtio-gpu-pci, virtio-block) devices: `qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -cpu host -accel kvm -m 4G -smp 4 -device ramfb -device virtio-gpu-pci -bios /usr/share/qemu/qemu-uefi-a

OpenBSD on Apple M2 with QEMU

Minimalist installation of OpenBSD on the Apple M2 using QEMU

Ingredients

Apple M2 running macOS Sonoma 14.4.1
QEMU version 8.2.1
OpenBSD 7.5 arm64

Installation

install QEMU with Homebrew brew install qemu, also possible with MacPorts
Write a script with execute permissions chmod +x qemu_aarch64_install_openbsd.sh for installing the image.

	# syntax=docker/dockerfile:1.4
	FROM gusto/ruby:2.7.6-ubuntu20.04 as build
	ARG GIT_TAG=0.5.10458.20220926130158-4007ec60a

	SHELL ["/bin/bash", "-o", "pipefail", "-c"]

	RUN <<END_OF_RUN
	set -ex
	apt-get update
	apt-get install -y software-properties-common

	import {
	MatchersV3,
	PactV3,
	PactV3Options,
	V3Request,
	V3Response,
	GraphQLVariables
	} from '@pact-foundation/pact';
	import { gql } from '@apollo/client/core';
	import { ASTNode, print } from 'graphql';