I did a bit of poking around looking into what virtual machine software runs on the M1s and discovered that VirtualBox from Oracle and the commercial software VMware Fusion do not, but Parallels Desktop does. When I asked him about this limitation of the M1 he said he didn’t see it as an issue (not sure why) but that he hadn’t yet looked into whether the open source virtual machine software VirtualBox would run on the M1, at least to run a Linux distribution (or distro as the cool kids say.) He has touted the Mac as the best platform because he can run macOS, Linux, and Windows all on one piece of hardware.

Knightwise’s mantra is “making technology work for you” and the center of that is being a slider who can use the best tool for the job, rather than being fanatically attached to one company’s technology (like some people we know).

I was actually surprised that in Knightwise’s recording about how much value he’s getting from his M1 MacBook Air, he never mentioned that as a downside. I talked on the show a while back about how the one downside to an M1 Mac is that you can’t run Windows, or at least not without a lot of faffing about.

Brew install virtualbox m1