M1 Pro - Is it possible to have GPU hardware acceleration in a Linux VM via the Apple Virtualization framework?

Question

Due to my professional workloads, I am unable to use MacOS as my primary OS but really love the MacBook Pro's high quality hardware and battery life so I'd like to find a way to make it work.

I am looking for a way to run GUI Linux on my MBP (I have tried Asahi with the experimental GPU drivers and I cannot wait for it to be daily drivable - but things like webcam support are essential).

I noticed that Apple offer various tutorials on getting up and running with Linux through their Virtualization framework - including adding Rosetta2 support.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/running_gui_linux_in_a_virtual_machine_on_a_mac

I realise I will probably sacrifice performance and battery life doing this, but it's better than not being able to use my laptop for work at all.

It also seems possible to share the GPU with MacOS guests, I am wondering if this is the case with Linux guests?

Is the best option to use GPU paravirtualization via Parallels?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible to have GPU hardware acceleration for Linux guest VMs on Apple Silicon macOS hosts using Apple's Virtualization and/or Hypervisor frameworks.

The most straight forward way of achieving this is virgl. As you mention, getting a license for Parallels Desktop is if not the best option, then probably the easiest option. It features automatic installation of Linux guests and easy setup of GPU hardware acceleration.

If you want to stick with FOSS, you can enable GPU acceleration within the guest in a relatively easy manner using homebrew-qemu-virgl.