VMware Fusion Brings Windows 11 to Apple Silicon Macs

VMware has been a popular virtualization application for years, and the Mac version is helpful for running Windows software on Apple computers. VMWare is still testing support for Apple’s new M1 or M2 chipsets (Apple Silicon), and now Windows 11 is supported.

VMware released a Tech Preview for the Mac version of Fusion on Thursday, which works similarly to Parallels Desktop. This is the first version of VMware that can run Windows 11 without any hacks or workarounds, on both Intel and Silicon-based Mac computers, thanks to a new virtual TPM module. VMware also now offers early graphics drivers for Windows on ARM, so 4K and higher resolutions should work — don’t expect to play any demanding games, though.

VMware is also improving Linux support on Apple Silicon Macs. The company said in a blog post, “working with the communities of various operating systems and open source open-source projects such as Mesa, Linux, as well as our own open-vm-tools, we’ve made many enhancements to the Linux on Apple silicon experience.” As long as you have an updated Linux distribution, it should work well in VMware.

The preview release still has the same core limitation as Parallels on Mac — you can’t boot an operating system designed for a different CPU architecture. That means you’re limited to ARM Windows and ARM Linux on Macs with Apple Silicon chips, while older Intel Macs have more options for operating systems. VMware also doesn’t support macOS virtual machines yet, and newer builds of Ubuntu Linux are broken.

If you need to reliably run Windows software on a modern Mac, Parallels is probably still the best option, since it’s a fully-supported commercial product (unlike VMware’s preview release). The free UTM app can also virtualize Windows on Mac with fewer features, and CodeWeavers CrossOver runs some Windows software through a compatibility layer.

Source: VMware Blog