Installing Other Linux Distros

A

Aba

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Has anyone found a way to install other Linux distributions in Parallels Desktop 16? I'm having problems with RHEL 8 Developer/CentOS 7/Rocky Linux and OpenSUSE 15.2 LEAP.

On RHEL/CentOS/Rocky Linux I cannot proceed past the grub screen. It's pretty much the same for each one:
Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 11.18.53 AM.png
For OpenSUSE i can get through the installer. This gets farther than any of the other systems. It complains about not being able to reach some update repos but it proceeds to download ~4.5GB of data in 2000+ files so i thought it was working. However after completion the system asks to reboot but will not boot. I have blank screen -- no grub, no anything:

Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 11.56.56 AM.png Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 11.59.56 AM.png Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 12.00.05 PM.png Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 12.17.51 PM.png Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 12.18.38 PM.png Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 12.19.08 PM.png

Has anyone been successful in getting any of these to work? What steps are involved? My use case is learning & studying for a sysadmin exam -- so mostly server/filesystem commands and scripting. I would at the least like to get CentOS and OpenSUSE going. I would very much appreciate any help.
 

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CodrutP1 said:
I cannot answer it cause I don't know the answer. I am just like you interested in this. But not many people are here involved and it seems Parallels users are interested mostly in Windows. Also employees do not care, they are not even saying something like: " we are working on it" or: "it will never work", at least we would know what to do.
Click to expand...
I was able to get OpenSUSE to run, but you have to disable the webcam, mic, and sound from the VM settings. Webcam and mic should be disabled by default but you have to explicitly disable sound. Check this screenshot:
Screen Shot 2021-06-08 at 12.13.31 AM.png

I'm hoping that RHEL/CentOS can be fix relatively easily since:
  1. Fedora is already supported from Parallels
  2. Fedora is upstream for RHEL/CentOS so not much is different right?
I read that it has something to do with a 64K vs 4K page .. I don't know what it all means as i'm just starting my linux journey. But they have to care. ARM is the future if this product is to continue selling. Understandably the focus is still on Intel hosts. Once Apple's ARM transition is complete in the next year or two and they stop selling Intel Macs I'm confident there will be a shift to make ARM hosts a priority. We are still technically early adopters and I know it's frustrating but we have to be patient.
 
Found in a Rocky Linux forum post: "It doesn't work on M1 due to the incorrect translation granule size - kernel assumes a 64KB page size, while Apple M1 only supports 4KB and 16KB (if I remember correctly)."
So it looks like it's a Rocky vs. M1 thing, not a Parallels thing.
 
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LFransson said:
Found in a Rocky Linux forum post: "It doesn't work on M1 due to the incorrect translation granule size - kernel assumes a 64KB page size, while Apple M1 only supports 4KB and 16KB (if I remember correctly)."
So it looks like it's a Rocky vs. M1 thing, not a Parallels thing.
Click to expand...
Good eye. I kind of found the same thing in relation to RHEL/Centos so I figured it was likely the same for Rocky. It's just ever-so-slightly annoying that Fedora works in Parallels but they don't.
 
Parallels 16 isn't the issue as it seems.. on Intel Macbook, centos8, rocky and rhel install just fine. I also suspect it's the chipset that's the issue.
 
rhoekstra said:
Parallels 16 isn't the issue as it seems.. on Intel Macbook, centos8, rocky and rhel install just fine. I also suspect it's the chipset that's the issue.
Click to expand...

I don't think so. Just installed Rocky Linux 8.4 to my MacBookPro Intel i9 on Parallel v17 and installation was successful until I installed the Parallels Tools!
The result after "dnf update" command is flashing a big marker on the text screen and reboots after hit ctlr+alt_del.

PARALLELS, PLEASE UPDATE YOUR TOOLS TO SUPPORT ROCKY LINUX!
 
MihailM said:
I don't think so. Just installed Rocky Linux 8.4 to my MacBookPro Intel i9 on Parallel v17 and installation was successful until I installed the Parallels Tools!
The result after "dnf update" command is flashing a big marker on the text screen and reboots after hit ctlr+alt_del.

PARALLELS, PLEASE UPDATE YOUR TOOLS TO SUPPORT ROCKY LINUX!
Click to expand...
Update: Disabling "Graphics 3D accelerating" solved the hang, but Parallels Tools still doesn't work.
 
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Why would Parallels give a flying eff about Distros other than Ubuntu (and maybe Fedora?).

You're talking about Mac users (~10% of marketshare), using a VM product (Parallels) - which can't be more than what? 25% of said Mac marketshare, using Linux VMs (now you're down to single digits for sure), then within that single digit %, you want VM additions/support for a Distro that (in this example) nobody uses?
I get it.. it's what "you" use and you want to be able to actually use it. But.. Parallels isn't going to support every Arm Distro under the sun.
 
ConnectixSoldOut said:
Why would Parallels give a flying eff about Distros other than Ubuntu (and maybe Fedora?).

You're talking about Mac users (~10% of marketshare), using a VM product (Parallels) - which can't be more than what? 25% of said Mac marketshare, using Linux VMs (now you're down to single digits for sure), then within that single digit %, you want VM additions/support for a Distro that (in this example) nobody uses?
I get it.. it's what "you" use and you want to be able to actually use it. But.. Parallels isn't going to support every Arm Distro under the sun.
Click to expand...

The difference between CentOS (already supported) and Rocky Linux (the new CentOS-like distro) is almost nothing, so the supporting effort will be minimal! Also, I am using my Parallels VMs to test new features and programs for many OSs and RHEL is one of the majors.

Regards!
 
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ConnectixSoldOut said:
Why would Parallels give a flying eff about Distros other than Ubuntu (and maybe Fedora?).

You're talking about Mac users (~10% of marketshare), using a VM product (Parallels) - which can't be more than what? 25% of said Mac marketshare, using Linux VMs (now you're down to single digits for sure), then within that single digit %, you want VM additions/support for a Distro that (in this example) nobody uses?
I get it.. it's what "you" use and you want to be able to actually use it. But.. Parallels isn't going to support every Arm Distro under the sun.
Click to expand...

Sheesh what a jerk. RedHat restructured its OS strategy essentially making CentOS a Fedora Redux. Rocky Linux is one of the more popular alternatives the community has coalesced around to fill the space left by CentOS when it moved upstream. It's only going to go up in popularity over time.

It's fair to say that SUSE is a bit obscure, but anyone who knows Linux enough to run virtualization should at least have heard of it. I was interested in OpenSUSE because of a Linux course I was taking that had it as a 3rd option from Ubuntu and Fedora, but also because they are big in the DevOps and Cloud-native space with products like Rancher and other Kubernetes tools so I just wanted to run it. No biggie.

Oh and also, my original post was also about RedHat which is probably THE most popular distro for development/sysadmin aside from ubuntu and that's not supported either. So please do get lost.
 
ARM Linux kernel can be built for 64k page size and this is what RHEL and SUSE use. Apple Silicon doesn't support 64k page size so these distros are unusable.

PS. I stand corrected re SUSE: 64k page size in SLES on ARM is optional.
 
I have looked at the list and it appears that some have gotten CentOS7 to work. Are there any tips or tricks for this? I would like to do some docker testing along with Ansible. I got Suse to work but that is not my flavor of choice.
 
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