Convopage
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117 replies and sub-replies as of Mar 22 2022
ESXi installed and patched, so now I’m installing macOS 11. It’ll be pretty good to finally have a Big Sur testing machine at hand, without having to reboot my development Mac
While macOS 11 installs in the background, I can get my 10.4 VM up and running 😄
The ESXi experience in VMWare Fusion is pretty great. Even though these x86-based VMs are running in a tiny box in the corner of the room, they all feel like they would if they were running natively. Which, of course, they never will on Apple Silicon
I haven’t yet figured out the specific setup to get macOS working with GPU passthrough (and I’m hoping the answer isn’t ‘use Clover’), but I did verify the Intel graphics chip does show up in Windows, and it even let me run Geekbench Compute (with a paltry score of 5000 or so)
The unfortunate quirk of passing through a GPU to an ESXi VM is that you no longer get display output via VMWare Fusion, so you have to use something like Remote Desktop instead. Windows VMs have accelerated graphics anyway, so I might just keep the GPU off for convenience
Also frustrating is VMWare Fusion’s use of tabbed windowing, which bizarrely it doesn’t offer an opt-out of. I’m sure there’s some AppKit/NSWindow defaults key I can set somewhere via the command line, but c’mon
It might be barely any bigger than a Raspberry Pi, but it’s surprising just how fast Windows runs as an ESXi virtual machine on the NUC. Even Windows 11 is snappy. Older OSes even more so
What I *really* wish existed is a full ESXi client, akin to VMWare Fusion, running on iPad 👀 Boot up, manage, control VMs directly, without needing to worry about running them locally or emulation or anything. Where is /that/ product @mikeroySoft 😅?
Another highlight: my Leopard VM with Xcode, the iPhoneOS 1.2 SDK, CodeWarrior and REALbasic
Figured out a way to get a VMWare framebuffer while still enabling the passthrough GPU, though I’m not sure if it works beyond compute tasks in this setup. Seems perfectly happy, though
Since ESXi runs on Raspberry Pi 4, it would be kinda fun to put together an ARM VM network provider to complement the x86 one, and then access them all from the same client… 🙃 Perhaps too underpowered for now, but it *does* run Windows-on-ARM VMs happily
Running Windows 10 ARM on ESXI ARM Fling on Raspberry Pi 4
Checking out Windows 10 on Arm for ESXi ARM fling on raspberry pi 4.○○○ LINKS ○○○esxi fling ► https://flings.vmware.com/esxi-arm-editioninstall esxi on rpi ►...
youtube.com
But why?
Remember when people’s heads exploded over that Dock design?
Aqua pill buttons need to come back
Are those leopard and Xcode images still on the developer portal? This is a lazy tweet, but would be fun to boot up.
they are indeed
Well, I know what I’m doing here sometime soon.
I miss those blue (ibuprofen gel) buttons.
doesn’t run on iPad
Oh right, for some reason I saw iPad there where it wasn’t
But this one does. Even though it says vSphere, I was able to point it directly at my ESXi box
vSphere Mobile Client
vSphere Mobile Client enables administrators to monitor and manage vSphere infrastructure directly from a mobile device (smartphone or tablet). You can find more details about it at https://flings.vmware.com/vsphere-mobile-client. Using the client, administrators can log in to a vCenter Server and…
apps.apple.com
except it only does management, doesn’t actually let you use the VMs
Have you tried the web interface on iPad?
That is far from the streamlined native interface I’m looking for as an end user
Somebody needs to scratch an itch maybe? 😜
They recently came out with this. Still early days so what you can do is limited but it’s getting more functionality with every release.
vSphere Mobile Client
vSphere Mobile Client enables administrators to monitor and manage vSphere infrastructure directly from a mobile device (smartphone or tablet). You can find more details about it at https://flings.vmware.com/vsphere-mobile-client. Using the client, administrators can log in to a vCenter Server and…
apps.apple.com
let me know of a stable setup for hackintosh. I’m looking for something to keep working without hiccups. just a couple of apps installed and a steady OS.
Bah. Stop trying to twist the iPad into that. It's bad enough Apple is trying to twist it into a Surface tablet competitor.
Boom. Takes me straight back to grad school.
does vmware fusion come with NeXTSTEP or did you have to add it?
Brilliant.
NeXTSTEP inside NeXTSTEP 🔥
One, please.
I always enjoy viewing screenshots of NextOS. It’s so interesting to see this sort of “proto”-macOS. So fascinating…
Chess dot app, still haunting us…
How many people know that’s OS X in reality? Steve just put some “Aqua” makeup to it and keep pushing Openstep with another name. At the end he never quit what he started. What a mind!
Ooh, how did you get this going/would you share your image? I did this before but had some trouble getting the mouse working properly.
For someone whose only ever used Fusion on a Mac, any pointers to an overview of what you’re doing with this setup? I find the VMware website a bit inscrutable for the uninitiated.
I installed VMWare’s ESXi (vSphere) as an OS on a compatible machine, prepared it using the web UI it gives you, and then Connect to it as a server from VMWare Fusion Pro. At that point you can create/migrate virtual machines to it and use them pretty much as normal
Which NUC did you get?
NUC10i5FNHN
Thanks!
NUC10i5FNHN in my case, but I’m no authority
How’s the performance using Mac OS without GPU acceleration?
Wait...does fusion integrate with ESX? What functionality does it give over the standard remote console?
it just works like Fusion. Create/run VMs, modify their settings, drag and drop local VMs to the server, etc
I hope you document all of this. I want something similar and already have an unused NUC. No idea where to start though!
That’s a lot of writing 😅
Make it a Patreon only post?
I'd pay for that!
Yeah, I can imagine. Maybe just a list of links that have helped you out?
So you have to license vSphere instead of vmWare Fusion?
you need VMWare Fusion Pro to connect to a server, but vSphere/ESXi has a free license for home use
for sure. But you would be spending a whole lot more money for a device that makes it difficult/impossible to upgrade the RAM or internal storage in. Great if you have one spare, though
Used Mac Pros are surprisingly reasonable from OWC (they even have some brand new ones left). Easy RAM & SSD upgrade as well: eshop.macsales.com/configure-my-m…
Won’t beat the NUC price, but also makes for a good option if you just want to run Fusion natively and screen share to it.
$1000 is reasonable for a 10 year old machine 😮. Dude you can buy the processor used in that for less than $50 it’s legacy stuff.
You don’t “need” VMWare Fusion Pro, you can do everything you need to do via the included web front end and Screen Sharing. You technically shouldn’t run OS X on a non Mac but it’s not like it’s hard to do…
oh sure. VMWare Fusion gives you a similar kind of management interface as you use for local VMs. You could use the web app for all that instead. I’ve been using Fusion for 15 years so I’m happy to stay there
Yeah its certainly easier to use if you are used to Fusion, mostly wanted to point out you don’t need to spend $200 to get started.
oh right, I forgot mine was an upgrade license 😶 Didn’t feel so expensive at the time!
There's also VMRC from vmware that's free and lets you connect to VMs
Here’s mine at the boot screen. Sadly I couldn’t get audio working. I kept getting the message that audio didn’t work on remote hosts. Also I was disappointed that USB redirect wasn’t a thing either.
you might be able to find add-on drivers for your specific hardware; luckily enough the NUC I’m running on seems to be fully compatible, sound and all. You can pass through USB controllers to the VM
Unfortunatelly THE reason I will have to move out of macOS and Apple 😢
Now that Apple no longer sells [many or any?] Macs which can virtualize macOS/x86, did they remove the license requirement which only allowed running macOS/x86 virtualized on Apple hardware?
How do you even do this? Fusion had a bunch of blocks to prevent non-server from installing. ESXi doesn't?
you can patch Fusion, and you can also patch ESXi
Patching the EFI?
Curious, been a while since I ran OSX in a VM.. still no 3d acceleration?
since ESXi is a bare metal hypervisor, you can pass through the host’s actual graphics card for the VM to use
True! Almost forgot about that.
10.4.9? I’ve never figured out how to get vanilla Tiger working, and most distros I’ve seen are 10.4.6 or 10.4.8, is that a distro or vanilla?
How does this work from a licensing perspective. I thought it was only valid and VMWare only allowed this if you ran ESXi on Apple hardware?
it doesn’t. You wouldn’t run this in a datacenter. For home use, though, very handy
I didn’t know macOS would just work inside a VM/Hypervisor on non-Apple hardware.
Seems a lot simpler than dealing with drivers for a Hackintosh.
#TIL
it's hackintosh, or vm?
Kinda both? It’s the ESXi hypervisor on an Intel NUC, running VMs
Do you have a guide for getting this working? Have an old NUC I’d love to try this on.
+1 for this request. Would love a guide on this
It’s a very simple google.
You must be a real fun guy to be around…
It’s possible Steve is being vague on this just letting ya know there’s other resources out there. I promise I am fun.
I thought running macOS virtual machines on non-Apple hardware was a EULA violation. Did that change?
details on how to run macOS on ESXi? Thanks
Are you doing this sitting at the nuc, or running/controlling these from another machine on the network?
over the network!
And me over here, using vnc like a yutz…
VMWare Fusion is way more fun. It’s almost indistinguishable from running them locally
I'm running 12.3 on opencore headless with vnc, and it's slow. the better way is to run it over ESXi? wild!
You still gotta use VNC if you pass a GPU through to a Mac VM, as it turns off the VMWare framebuffer. I haven’t got that working yet, but it should work fine on a 2018 Mac mini
oh neat
i have an 8th gen nuc, i hackintoshed it - very happy with it
Just bought something similar but with a Ryzen 7 5700G 👀
Help. WTF is a "bare metal hypervisor"? What will you use that to do?
if you follow the thread, you’ll see
these are great.
Which one did you end up getting?
How much ram is on that? 8, 16?
16 currently, but you can add more
V useful to know; thank you. The one I looked at on Amazon seemed to say it was limited to only 8GB.
The CPU would be a major bottleneck past about 16 GB but I think you can put two 32 GB DIMMs and get up to 64 GB.
*Intel Nuke
Where did you order from? Struggling to find them
Thanks 🙂
He's so cute 🥺
Please please share a how-to guide