As part of our transition to subscription and a simplified portfolio, beginning today, we will no longer sell perpetual licenses. All offerings will continue to be available as subscriptions going forward. Additionally, we are ending the sale of Support and Subscription (SnS) renewals for perpetual offerings beginning today.
↫ Krish Prasad of VMware
This sucks. Every few years, I would buy a cheap VMware license on eBay for like €10 or something, to keep my Windows virtual machine going for the incredibly rare cases where I need one for my job because some popular CAT tools are Windows-only. I really do not wish to buy a subscription for that.
I guess it’s time to transition to VirtualBox.
There is still no good alternative to vmware player / fusion or pro at the moment. And fortunately broadcom is still offering perpetual licenses for them, including a free personal one.
But, yes overall this move for everything to become a subscription is not good. Not only because you’d be possibly paying more, but now you have to keep machines that were supposed to be “fire and forget” manually updated (worse, connected to the network/internet).
Let’s see what they do about vmware user group (vmug) licensing, which was really a good discount for “homelab” users:
https://www.vmug.com/membership/vmug-advantage-membership/
sukru,
I’ve used vmware player a long time ago, but I am not clear why you would say there are no good alternatives? What are your use cases such that there’s no good alternative to vmware player?
Alfman,
For starters, on Mac, virtualbox does not exist. There is Parallels Desktop, but obviously it does not exist on other systems. (There is also an open source UTM: https://mac.getutm.app/, but it has ways to go).
On Windows, autostarting of Virtualbox was an hassle (not sure if it is still the case).
On Linux, we have KVM/virt-viewer, but again they are not multi-platform.
I might have been out of touch the last few years. But as far as I know there is no multi-platform, easy to use, high quality virtual machine software like it at the moment. (And also happens to be free* in some cases). In time this might change, though.
sukru,
Virtualbox does officially exist for intel macs and I believe it has for a long time. There’s a developer preview for ARM based macs, but apparently the CPU translation isn’t kind to performance.
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#hostossupport
I was under the impression Thom was using linux and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend qemu for him, but obviously mac and different platform users will have to look at other alternatives.
Another possibility might be to use wine (on linux or mac).
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/urge-software-wineskin-winery-for-mac
While many applications don’t work under wine, it’s probably worth a shot if you have a specific must have windows application. You might be lucky and have it just work.
I wasn’t previously aware of this, but apparently QEMU added support for apple’s hypervisor on intel macs…
https://www.jwillikers.com/virtualize-ubuntu-desktop-on-macos-with-qemu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSHUXe2aMso
It also will use the hypervisor.framework on ARM-based Macs, as well
Drumhellar,
That should allow ARM guests should run near native speed, very cool,
Does it support x86 guests though? I’m not sure if apple exposes a rosetta2 API? QEMU’s software emulation capabilities work on ARM, but it’s quite slow. Qemu might give you 15% performance in my experience whereas rosetta 2 is said to reach about 80%.
I’ve never even heard of it, but FEX posted some decent scores along with box64.
https://box86.org/2022/03/box86-box64-vs-qemu-vs-fex-vs-rosetta2/
https://fex-emu.com/
Note: it’s not a full VM, just lets you run x86 binaries on arm.
Drumhellar,
Do you mean the virtualization API in the OS?
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization
Yes, that seems to be getting adoption by many applications now, including UTM: https://github.com/search?q=org%3Autmapp%20class%20VZVirtualMachine&type=code
Alfman,
I did not know they finally started working on the Apple Silicon version of VirtualBox.
But that comes back to my point. vmware offers out of the box working solution on multiple platforms, without needing to hack configs, use experimental branches, or so on.
Yes, for a Linux only user libvirt+kvm based solutions would be a good choice (or proxmox if you seek “vmware lite”)
sukru,
I tried looking this up and all my searches indicate that neither parallels nor vmware support x86 VMs on modern macs either.
https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2021/04/fusion-on-apple-silicon-progress-update.html
https://forum.parallels.com/threads/about-running-x86-vms-on-m1-macs.353907/
Many people are posting about how their old x86 vmware VMs don’t work on new macs.
windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/vmware-turns-apples-latest-macs-into-windows-11-pcs-with-new-fusion-13
So if these sources are correct, I would say that vmware has even less support for emulating VMs across platforms (ie none whatsoever) compared to QEMU.
Edit: I said “emulating VMs across platforms” when I should have said “emulating VMs across architectures”.
Alfman,
Yes, you are right. vmware does not support x86 virtual machines on mac (new ones at least), whereas qemu does.
However, Windows 11 on Arm (on Mac) works really well with their emulation, including games, with support for DX11.
(Though, if I were to play games, I would prefer Crossover, which has better API emulation, tighter mac integration, and overall a more straightforward experience).
Anyway, I might revise the statement to: for most use cases…
I run a x86 VM on ARM Mac for work via vagrant+qemu. It works pretty well. It doesn’t feel as quite as fast as when I ran on an Intel Mac (vagrant+VirtualBox), but it’s serviceable for getting my work done. My workflow is 100% Linux terminal via SSH, however, so I can’t really talk about GUI. If I get some time, maybe I’ll spin one up to see.
On a side note, for containers podman machine/desktop seamlessly runs arm64 and x86_64 containers on Mac. It’s running an arm64 Fedora CoreOS VM using Qemu under the hood, with qemu on the VM itself to run x86 containers. When you run an x86 container, it’ll just pop a warning about the architecture and run it anyway, or you can give it –arch x86_64 and skip the warning.
MattPie,
Like you, I’ve only used qemu on ARM to run console apps. On those SBCs, even the native desktop can feel laggy, I think it comes down to GPU acceleration, that makes a difference.
My guess is that a desktop under qemu on an apple ARM computer will work for infrequent tasks but will get frustrating if you have to use it regularly. I don’t know if Virtualbox supports graphics acceleration on ARM, but conceivably that might produce a better desktop experience than QEMU.
MattPie,
I will talk specifically about Apple’s ARM, but I think this is true for Microsoft’s ARM (Snapdragon X) as well.
The hardware has special support for emulating x86, for example the memory modes:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25264290
And, yes, proper GPU virtualization also helps a lot. vmware has directx 11 support. qemu has some open source vulkan drivers (but I have not tested it).
Again, circling back, vmware automates all these, and works out of the box. UTM is close as a “mac only solution”.
Alfman,
I’m not sure SBC’s would be a good showcase for x86 emulation. Of course Raspberry PI can run DOS games, or even Windows 9x (with effort), but I would not be expecting anything close to native for modern applications.
(I might be mistaken though).
sukru,
Intel uses a strict memory model whereas ARM is more lax. Though in practice portable software usually doesn’t depend on x86 memory model’s anyway. It is very costly to emulate a strict memory model in software, but the majority of x86 software doesn’t care anyway and both linux and windows developers are encouraged to write their software using portable primitives.
I think qemu can render screens to vulkan surfaces, but I’ve always assumed that the performance bottlenecks existed inside the VM. Qemu doesn’t offer accelerated guest OS drivers as far as I know. I think both virtualbox and vmware do.
That’s true for older SBCs. I just got a hold of an RPI4 for the first time and I haven’t gotten to use it yet but I’m looking forward to testing it’s performance. Of course they’re are RPI5 now, which is supposed to be much faster, but it was completely out of stock – as is tradition.
Alfman,
I had bought a few before the craze. But, yes finding anything in stock is a chore.
Fortunately someone had made a good tracker (including RPi5, which is only available for backorder, though)
https://rpilocator.com/
Can filter with things like location, or model.
So for $200/year membership you get a 1 year training licenser, is that correct?
AndrewZ,
Yes, a believe so. This is from their web page:
Thom Holwerda,
I think VirtualBox is pretty good. But if you want to go the FOSS route qemu works well too if you don’t need GPU acceleration in the guest.
There’s lots of front ends.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/QEMU/QEMU_front-ends
I’ve used virt manager, it’s easy to use and probably fits your needs.
https://virt-manager.org/
There’s also web based front ends that let’s you manage & access VMs from a web browser. Once installed, it works well, but it’s a steep learning curve so I don’t recommend it for inexperienced users.
https://guacamole.apache.org/doc/gug/introduction.html
These subscription models are a real pain. And more and more software manufactures switching to it. Only solution is to switch to free tools.
I agree. I can’t stand subscription models. Haven’t researched the FOSS route, but VirtualBox does everything I need anyway.
I use Proxmox VE for all my virtualization needs.
VirtualBox’s display adapter is nowhere near as good as VMware Workstation’s.
For how long I do not know, but according to the link, Workstation is not subject to this licensing change.
“Q: What products and bundles are impacted by this new policy?
A: Here is a list of products impacted by the new licensing policy:
VMware Cloud Foundation
VMware vSphere
VMware vSAN
VMware NSX
VMware HCX
VMware Site Recovery Manager
VMware vCloud Suite
VMware Aria Suite
VMware Aria Universal
VMware Aria Automation
VMware Aria Operations
VMware Aria Operations for Logs
VMware Aria Operations for Networks”
Ever notice how bigname software that goes subscription-only is the kind of bigname software there is no FOSS alternative available for?
Adobe Photoshop -> You need it if you have a print shop that uses CMYK or Pantone indexed color, no FOSS alternative available
VMWare vSphere and the like -> VirtualBox and QEMU will get you an alternative to VMWare Player but there is no FOSS alternative to VMWare vSphere and the like.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Office which experiences competition from LibreOffice (which has become surprisingly good lately) is still available as a perpetual license.
Same for MATLAB which has competition from Octave: available as a perpetual license.
Same for the various video editing utilities from Corel, Cyberlink and Pinnacle which aren’t quite Adobe Premiere material and have to compete with the likes of OpenShot (note: post some other good FOSS video editor if you know one): all of them available as a perpetual license.
I don’t think this is a coincidence. I guess Richard Stallman was right all along. If everyone buying a license for Adobe Photoshop or VMWare vSphere also sent 5% of the purchase price towards some FOSS project, they’d probably have a FOSS alternative to that software.
BTW I am saying bigname software because even smaller developers try to get in on the subscription con: For example, GitKraken went subscription-only ahd they also made the last free version not work (by making the login feature which is required to run the software not work). I promptly uninstalled the last free version of GitKraken and installed gitg. Someone out there thinks they are frickin’ Adobe and can demand subscriptions. But when it comes to bigname software, the pattern I mentioned in my previous post holds.
I agree with you and everyone else that subscriptions are worse for many of us. The reason we can still use old software archived software (and even things like movies on physical media) is because they were perpetually licensed. Assuming mandatory subscriptions continues to replace the ownership of perpetual licenses, then it’s going to create a sort of dark ages for computing with software archives becoming an obsolete concept.
ARM Ltd. sells their compilers on subscription. So no chance to archive the compiler with a project in case you have to make a bug fix in 15 year. And yes, there is software which needs to maintained in 15 year or even 20 year from now.
DeepThought,
Personally I think this model is very concerning. It’s not good to be dependent on others to have access to your own works. We’ve already seen some of the consequences of subscription software that retroactively breaks user work…
https://creative-boost.com/adobe-removing-pantone-colors/
I don’t want to paint all vendors under the same brush, but…it’s just one of those things that seems like such a bad idea long term. Allowing others to hold works hostage is not a good thing!
I’m afraid that if regulators don’t intervene and put the breaks down, we will see more hardware and software vendors using DRM to demand ransom. This is going to spread to everything and eventually consumers won’t get much say. Not only for digital assets, but physical things too like being allowed to control the heating elements in your own car.
Lol, ARM the little architecture for freedom that goes against the evil x86 empire (according to most Linux users):
1) Patented to the teeth just like x86
2) Effective duopoly between Qualcomm and ARM’s own cores, just like AMD vs Intel.
3) No standardized bootloader or unaccelerated video output (like VESA), which means no generic images (LibreELEC is a good example of this: one image for x86-64, a ton of images for ARM to support just a handful of ARM devices)
4) Subscription for the official compiler.
xcp-ng + xen orchestra is almost a drop in replacement for vsphere/esxi.
XO is free if you compile it yourself. Their docs even tell you how to do it.
xcp-ng works just like esxi where you build out a node and then import it into a cluster.
XO even has a utility to import virtual machines directly from vsphere automatically. I switched a couple of years ago before there was an automated tool, but it was pretty easy and all of my machines converted with only needed to replace the vmware tools with the xcp-ng/xenserver agents.
I bought UTM on mac to make my M1 virtualizion easier. It is a fully fledged qemu with nice front end. I run linux, freebsd, windows 3.1 to nt4 and xp without a glitch. Also support sparc classic machines, macos 9 and much more. Being based on qemu i say it will be around for a long time, support almost all architecture you can imagine, and also apple hypervisor for maximum speed if its a requirement.