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0 pointslsllc5y ago0 comments

It appeared to be Ubuntu for ARM64. If it wasn't virtualized, could it have been running under QEMU? Or maybe some sort of WSL type shim into the Darwin kernel?

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5 comments · 1 top-level

intpx5y ago· 4 in thread

pardon my ignorance, but how is QEMU not virtualization? There have been MacOS builds of KVM/QEMU for a couple of years now and I distinctly remember seeing that it had either been added or was being added to the base OS (google-fu is failing me because of so many results about the reverse-- running MacOS under KVM/QEMU).

moon25y ago

QEMU can either be used for virtualization (i.e. running x86 Linux on your x86 Mac) or emulation (i.e. running PPC Mac on your x86 Mac).

jki2755y ago

QEMU is an emulator, not virtualization. It allows the user to run an OS designed for one type of CPU on a host system of a different type. i.e running Raspbian (ARM Linux) through QEMU on an X64 Linux Host running on an X64 machine.

Virtualization, by contrast, allows the user to run a guest OS designed for the same architecture as the physical hardware. i.e running x64 Linux guest on an X64 host that runs Windows as a host OS.

QEMU can do both the complete emulation you describe and accelerated virtualization similar to that offered by VMWare.

dekhn5y ago

But to add to the complexity, many virtualization systems use QEMU as a support library to achieve stuff.

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