No Rosetta 2 from macOS 28 - how it will affect docker, utm, whisky wine, etc.

[dszakal]

Apple to Phase Out Rosetta 2 Starting With macOS 28 as Intel Era Ends

Following its WWDC keynote on Monday, Apple updated a developer document to indicate that Rosetta 2 will remain available through macOS 27. Rosetta 2 enables Macs with Apple silicon (Arm architecture) to run apps that were built for Macs with an Intel processor (x86 architecture), by translating...

www.macrumors.com

So macOS 27 seems to be the last macOS version supporting Rosetta 2.

How this will affect:

- docker x64 Linux dev images?
- whisky + wine x86 apps/games unmaintained from the 90s?
- crossover + wine x86 apps/games unmaintained from the 90s?
- utm VMs with x64 emulation?
- parallels, vmware may run an x64 Windows or Linux without Rosetta2?

How do these software work today on Macs where Rosetta 2 is not enabled when you try something x64?

 

[KPOM]

Parallels should work because it is for running ARM operating systems, including Windows ARM. Microsoft has its own Rosetta-like translation layer for running x86 Windows apps.

Whisky isn’t being updated anymore. Crossover relies on Rosetta 2, so will need to be updated. In 2021, the Crossover team said they would be prepared for the end of Rosetta but haven’t made any statements since Apple’s announcement Monday.

 

[galad]

The issue is not Rosetta 2, which is a small binary, the issue is that to make it run macOS apps Apple needs to ship a x86_64 version of every library. Probably they will check which libraries are needed by old games, and keep a x86_64 version of those. Or make a lightweight VM, or something else.

Apple just introduced a new framework to make Linux x64 VM, so I guess that won't go away any time soon. And even without Rosetta they could just use their own translator.

I don't know how Wine works internally, it might need macOS x86_64 libraries around or not.

utm, parallels, vmware are unaffected.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Apple just introduced a new framework to make Linux x64 VM

Does that framework work with x64 VMs (aka 64-bit x86), or only with ARM VMs? I thought it was the latter.

 

[crazy dave]

Apple is being a bit vague, but even from their own statements Rosetta 2 isn't going away entirely and Apple's own GPTK and gaming initiatives rely on it. So most of what you asked about will likely be unaffected or minorly so and there will undoubtedly be workarounds. It will however discourage developers continuing to ship new macOS-x64 binaries.