Clojurians Log v2
off-topic 2026-08-31
Testing Windows stuff is part of my almost-daily workflow while I'm not even using Windows myself, it's mostly for consumer of my libraries/projects. A Parallels subscription seems tempting since then I can test stuff even on my laptop when I'm not at home (where my dedicated Windows PC is). And it's more convenient than free VMWare / whatever else in this space. Anyone else using it? Experiences?
Just curious - why is Parallels more convenient?
All the keybindings just work like you'd expect, Cmd-tab etc. Applications appear in between your normal mac apps with alt-tab too. You can automate stuff with the command line from your mac (for testing)
copy pasting between these things also works without wasting brain power
but I don't like subscriptions that much :)
Ahh, you're on Mac, alright. Same things I used to have with VirtualBox, back when I still had to use Windows for some odd thing here and there, but I'm on Linux. But do you need a GUI at all?
Good question. I guess if I can set up ssh, I wouldn't
Cool, might even make a script with QEMU or something that automatically starts a Windows VM in the background if the desired port isn't served by sshd.
Nice cross platform Qemu wrapper, seems Windows guest support is experimental https://lima-vm.io/docs/usage/guests/windows/
They seem to have released Windows support few weeks ago. It's "headless first" generally, display stuff might require some exploration if needed.
There's no display connection out of box like with Virtualbox or Spice viewer in libvirt. Linux guests can use Waypipe (or cocoa-way), xvfb, vnc e.t.c. which works nice for browser or gui application development/testing similar to containers.
When I moved from macOS to Linux I switched to from Parallels to VirtualBox. It has been working well for me.
Virtualbox is nice. I switched from MacOS to Linux when it stopped working there. But more recently switched from Virtualbox to libvirt / lima as they use Qemu/KVM. A running Virtualbox blocks other virtualization tools like KVM/Qemu from being able to start parallel.. Vagrant supports both VBox and libvirt which can make switching easy if needed.
I used Parallels for a project in which I was shipping (or trying to ship) multi platform and I was using GraalVM for native image compilation. The thing I didn’t realise is that the Windows needed to be also Arm (as the processor of the Mac) - the support of amd64 Win on Arm mac in Parallels is limited (https://kb.parallels.com/en/130217) I ended up installing (and transferring the license) on an old intel mac just for this compilation…