The only distribution that works without issue under Parallels, regardless of version, is Ubuntu or Ubuntu derived distributions. If you’re wondering why I just don’t run everything under Parallels, it’s because Fedora and some of the other distributions I need to run don’t work very well with Parallels. When I downgraded back to 6.1.26 it all started to work again. Under 6.1.28 I ran into the same VM boot issue, even though the documented changes were still in place. I ran into another issue when I upgraded from VirtualBox 6.1.26 to 6.1.28. The next time you attempt to start a VirtualBox VM, you will succeed. Then reboot out of recovery mode and back into macOS. In the terminal execute spctl kext-consent disable.In the terminal execute csrutil enable -without kext.When in recovery mode, open a terminal (Utilities > Terminal), using the menus on the upper left.

Boot the MBP into macOS recovery mode following these directions:.When I stepped up to Big Sur 11.6, VirtualBox VMs would no longer boot.Įvery time I would attempt to start a VirtualBox VM, I would get something like the following: It ran without issue on every release before that. VirtualBox ran just fine until I updated macOS to 11.6. One major difference between VirtualBox and Parallels is that VirtualBox appears to need a kernel extension installed for its VMs to operate. The only problem is I have no need to run Windows as a VM, as the critical application Office is available as a native macOS application.

Both are capable of running most Linux distributions I care about, and Parallels is known for running Windows, and rather seamlessly, on the macOS desktop. For that purpose, there are two well-known tools Oracle’s VirtualBox, which is open source and free, and Parallels Desktop, which is commercial. One of the tasks I use the MBP for is running Linux virtual machines. It is a powerful developer machine that has been in constant use since I purchased it last June. The MBP is a mid-2019 machine with an i9, 64 GiB of memory, and 4 TB of SSD. I run Linux virtual machines on my MacBook Pro.

Oracle virtualbox for mac