UTM for Virtualization
I recently converted my Windows laptop to Ubuntu. I don't rely on
Windows for anything personally any longer so I didn't need a dedicated
machine for that OS. However, as the extended family tech support guy,
there are occasions when I need to use Windows 10 and Windows 11 to
troubleshoot issues for my relatives who have yet to see the light and
buy a Mac. I relied on Oracle's free VirtualBox for a long time to
build VMs and I've had licensed copies of Parallels
through work off and on through the years. It's a good product, but not
worth the price just for occasional use.
My current choice for running Windows in a VM on a Mac is UTM. It's free and allows you to run an Intel based version of Windows on an M series Mac. It's slow and inefficient, not something you want to use every day, but for testing and troubleshooting, it's fine. You can't game with a UTM virtual machine. UTM does not currently support GPU emulation/virtualization on Windows and therefore lacks support for 3D acceleration (e.g. OpenGL and DirectX). If you need a Windows license, you can get one at Stack Socialfor $15.
There is a gallery of prebuilt VMson the UTM site.
Windows
- Windows 11
- Windows 10
- Windows 7
- Windows XP
Linux (multiple version of each distro)
- Arch
- Debian
- Fedora
- Kali
- Ubuntu
My choice for creating and running Mac VMs is Virtual Buddy. You can choose a Mac release (including betas) from a long list ranging from macOS 13.3 all the way to macOS 15.1 RC1. If you have a URL for another IPSW or an IPSW you have already downloaded, you can use them as well.