Slightly less in the limelight were VirtualBox and QEMU-based UTM. Parallels is also another popular choice for virtualisation on MacOS. Unsurprisingly VMWare was still a big name, with their MacOS software hypervisor Fusion being popular. Moving to MacOS, I wasn't sure what the virtualisation ecosystem was like. Virtualisation Options on M1īefore receiving my MacBook Pro, I primarily worked in Linux environments and my virtualisation software of choice was VMWare Workstation. So debugging is important too! While not strictly relevant to the overarching topic of virtualisation, I'll touch on this brieflyĪnd, well, that's about it! If this sounds of any interest to you, feel free to continue reading as I outline how I achieved this setup, the thought process behind some of my choices and likely most relevant are some of the gotchas I encountered along the way. Speaking of variety, I need to be able to spin up guests running on difference architectures, specifically aarch64 (native) and x86_64 (emulated).I need to be able to spin up a variety of 'research' guests likely short lived and many so ease of setup is important.I want a 'dev' guest that would run Linux and be my main development workhorse this is where I'd be spending a lot of time so performance is key.As a security researcher and Linux enthusiast there we a couple of important factors: This is the general gist of what I set out to, and outline how to, achieve in this post. Before I take any more of your time, take a look at the diagram below: So, turns out the title might have been a little clickbaity, as my virtual empire is more of a virtual hamlet. So without further ado, below is the culmination of moments of bewilderment, exasperation and elation as I transitioned my workflow as a Linux security researcher from Linux x86_64 to MacOS aarch64. However, after some time researching, tweaking and debugging I'm now in a position where I can happily say I have no regrets moving to Apple Silicon and in fact am beginning to see what the hype is all about! Of course, this isn't to say the grass really is perfectly green on the other side, there are still issues, particularly due to it's infancy, but more on that soon! The panic started to set in, had I made a horrific decision? In getting caught up in the hype and excitement I'd forgotten the implications of switching my workflow to a completely different architecture, and one as new as Apple's Silicon.

In my infinite wisdom (read: hubris), of course I opted for the new MacBook Pro - after all, with all the headlines and buzz, I wanted to see what this M1 fuss was all about! Security Researcher (yay me) and as a work from home position this came with the perk of picking some shiny new work kit with the two main contenders being a new Dell Precision or a MacBook Pro. I recently started an awesome new role as a Sr.

M1 qemu