Free alternative to Parallels?

[Javi74]

Hi!
Can anybody suggest a free alternative to Parallels for virtualizing Windows 10 and Ubuntu? I'm afraid Virtualbox doesn't support M1 yet.
Thanks.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Was going to suggest Virtualbox. You can’t virtualise windows ten or regular Ubuntu on an m1 mac anyway, so if that’s your goal you’re out of luck.

 

[jdb8167]

Was going to suggest Virtualbox. You can’t virtualise windows ten or regular Ubuntu on an m1 mac anyway, so if that’s your goal you’re out of luck.

Virtualbox developers said that they had no interest in anything but x86 support. I don’t know if they changed their minds but as far as I know, Virtualbox is dead on the Mac.

 

[jdb8167]

Hi!
Can anybody suggest a free alternative to Parallels for virtualizing Windows 10 and Ubuntu? I'm afraid Virtualbox doesn't support M1 yet.
Thanks.

I’ve been trying to get QEMU 6.0.0 working but no luck so far. The previous 5.2 release works on the M1 with patches but there isn’t an easy way to install it. The recommended route of using brew doesn’t seem to apply the patches needed and brew hasn’t been updated to 6.0 yet.

The UTM app works but with quite a few issues in my experience. I haven’t used Parallels but I wouldn’t call UTM stable enough to compete with a commercial product. You can try it yourself though for free: https://mac.getutm.app.

 

[Stephen.R]

VMware I believe has a free-for-personal-use option now?

 

[jdb8167]

VMware I believe has a free-for-personal-use option now?

Not yet. The latest blog post said that they would have a preview by the end of the year. https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2021/04/fusion-on-apple-silicon-progress-update.html

 

[haralds]

Try UTM, a wrapper for Qemu. It is somewhat less sophisticated than Parallels, but free.
I much prefer Parallels Desktop, but I also use it for work. Their feature set and ease of use plus graphics performance is much superior for Windows 10 ARM to Qemu.

 

[leons]

Try UTM, a wrapper for Qemu. It is somewhat less sophisticated than Parallels, but free.
I much prefer Parallels Desktop, but I also use it for work. Their feature set and ease of use plus graphics performance is much superior for Windows 10 ARM to Qemu.

Does UTM allow you to run Linux in a VM and switch back/forth with MacOS as Parallels does? Which distros does it support? GUI or only CLI?

 

[perplx]

If you are ok with cli only you can use docker.

 

[jdb8167]

Does UTM allow you to run Linux in a VM and switch back/forth with MacOS as Parallels does? Which distros does it support? GUI or only CLI?

Yes it is just a VM running in a normal MacOS window. It uses Apple’s hypervisor just like Parallels. I’ve only tested it with Arm64 Ubuntu 20.04 with the normal Ubuntu GUI desktop. It worked reasonably well but I didn’t do any real work with it.

 

[KingOfPain]

If you want to run the ARM64 versions of Windows 10 and Ubuntu, I‘d recommend ACVM as a frontend to QEMU, since it‘s easier to use than UTM for that purpose:

GitHub - ubenmackin/ACVM: GUI frontend for qemu for Apple Silicon based Macs

GUI frontend for qemu for Apple Silicon based Macs - ubenmackin/ACVM

github.com

For newer x86 OSes QEMU/UTM probably is the only option, but it will be really slow.

For Windows 9x you could also try DOSBox-X (you‘ll have to use the command “xattr -cr“ on the application or you‘ll get a message that it is broken) or PCem, which has no official release for macOS yet, but you can build it from the source.

DOSBox-X - Accurate DOS emulation for Windows, Linux, macOS, and DOS

DOSBox-X: Free, cross-platform and complete DOS, Windows 3.x and 9x emulation package

dosbox-x.com

GitHub - PCemOnMac/PCemV17macOS: Port of the PCem PC emulator for macOS. Comes with OpenGL 3.0 support built-in

Port of the PCem PC emulator for macOS. Comes with OpenGL 3.0 support built-in - PCemOnMac/PCemV17macOS

github.com

 

[jdb8167]

If you want to run the ARM64 versions of Windows 10 and Ubuntu, I‘d recommend ACVM as a frontend to QEMU, since it‘s easier to use than UTM for that purpose:

GitHub - ubenmackin/ACVM: GUI frontend for qemu for Apple Silicon based Macs

GUI frontend for qemu for Apple Silicon based Macs - ubenmackin/ACVM

github.com

For newer x86 OSes QEMU/UTM probably is the only option, but it will be really slow.

For Windows 9x you could also try DOSBox-X (you‘ll have to use the command “xattr -cr“ on the application or you‘ll get a message that it is broken) or PCem, which has no official release for macOS yet, but you can build it from the source.

DOSBox-X - Accurate DOS emulation for Windows, Linux, macOS, and DOS

DOSBox-X: Free, cross-platform and complete DOS, Windows 3.x and 9x emulation package

dosbox-x.com

GitHub - PCemOnMac/PCemV17macOS: Port of the PCem PC emulator for macOS. Comes with OpenGL 3.0 support built-in

Port of the PCem PC emulator for macOS. Comes with OpenGL 3.0 support built-in - PCemOnMac/PCemV17macOS

github.com

Both

GitHub - ubenmackin/ACVM: GUI frontend for qemu for Apple Silicon based Macs

GUI frontend for qemu for Apple Silicon based Macs - ubenmackin/ACVM

github.com

and the original that it was forked from

https://github.com/KhaosT/ACVM

look pretty dead though. Neither has had any activity for 4-5 months. People are working on UTM and they are getting ready to release a version using QEMU 6.0.