Virtual Box is being ported to Apple Silicon Macs

[exgphe]

Virtualbox 7.0 Beta 1 added a macOS AArch64 dmg, which supports Apple Silicon as a host.

However, it does not support ARM guest OS. Instead, it emulates the x86 architecture, and only supports running 32-bit guest OS for now.

The current pinned post mentions that Virtualbox is a Hypervisor, not an Emulator, so it won't work on the M1 Mac. Given the facts from the latest version, Virtualbox is officially becoming an Emulator that runs x86 guests on Apple Silicon hosts. Therefore, I suggest that the pinned post get some updates. Also for sharing the latest news for everyone who might be interested in it.

[mpack]

AFAIK the info in the pinned topic is still accurate. It will of course be updated as and when something real happens. The feature you mention is still in beta, and I'm not sure it was even announced officially.

In a way the ARM64 package "slipped out", and it's not expected to work reliably. The implementation isn't complete yet ... , and in top of that the performance is known to be extremely low. It isn't anywhere near production ready, we know. This will not change for VirtualBox 7, and the "Technology Preview" marker will stay for the foreseeable future, indicating that it won't be supported at all.

At best you'll get some really old 32-bit Linux to run to some degree, such as DSL 4.4.10. No chance even with Ubuntu 16.04 i386.

[exgphe]

AFAIK the info in the pinned topic is still accurate. It will of course be updated as and when something real happens. The feature you mention is still in beta, and I'm not sure it was even announced officially.

In a way the ARM64 package "slipped out", and it's not expected to work reliably. The implementation isn't complete yet ... , and in top of that the performance is known to be extremely low. It isn't anywhere near production ready, we know. This will not change for VirtualBox 7, and the "Technology Preview" marker will stay for the foreseeable future, indicating that it won't be supported at all.

At best you'll get some really old 32-bit Linux to run to some degree, such as DSL 4.4.10. No chance even with Ubuntu 16.04 i386.

Of course. I did mention that it is a beta, so one should expect it to not work as expected . Nevertheless it is a good start.

[sunilnagavelli]

I have been waiting for this for a long time, since 2021 per se, this would be the greatest contribution to Apple from Oracle, With the initial testing, I am seeing the error below

ERROR [COM]: aRC=NS_ERROR_FAILURE ......{Unsupported CPU. (VERR_UNSUPPORTED_CPU)}, preserve=false aResultDetail=-1002

I have tried to download both the arm64 and amd64 versions of ubuntu ISO, but both has the same error, unable to boot the VMs

I have created a thread on Reddit for the same /r/virtualbox/comments/x75qb4/virtualbox_7_beta_mac_m1_unsupported_cpu_in/

May I know which pinned post are you referring to here?

[scottgus1]

The "pinned post" being referred to is the sticky at the top of the Mac Hosts forum about porting to M1 Macs.