Thank you everyone for the helpful replies. (Sorry this is long). I'm in the process of re-installing various combinations of things to get a better idea of what is going on.
To answer some of the questions above:
@KO Myung-Hun: No, the older VirtualBox 6 does show the blue V chip instead of the green turtle when running the VM. So the issue might well be the super slow green turtle that happens on VirtualBox 7. As Roderick mentions it looks like VirtualBox has been forced to use Apple's hypervisor framework since macOS Ventura onwards. I don't have control over the Paravirtualization Interface that is chosen - it seems to always to be None.
@Martin: Thanks. I've started from scratch with the 7.1.6 VirtualBox version and Extensions and am following the installation guide on the ArcaOS website exactly.
@Sigurd: Are you able to confirm if the VMWare Tools I'm using are the ones that you use? I'm using the ones from
https://github.com/wwiv/os2-guest/releases/ ?
@JTA: Thanks. I'll use the standard VirtualBox Additions that come with ArcaOS and not downgrade or upgrade anything.
What isn't explained in all this Apple hypervisor explanation is how VMWare continues to get very good performance on the latest macOS versions, but VirtualBox doesn't. Presumably they too have had to use Apple's framework. Hmm ... Here are some posts about the poor performance:
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=110591 https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=109695 https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=111784 https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/22004 (the last comment)
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=107801 (but disabling IO-APIC didn't seem to help me)
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=109722I ran a small cpu speed exe that I got from (what was) Hobbes and the frequency given for VMWare matched my real CPU almost exactly, and consistently. Whereas the VirtualBox reading varied wildly and was much slower.
I realise you guys are mostly PC people and we Mac users are a minority here, but it would be great to get your thoughts: If Apple's hypervisor means the green turtle is always used, then how would Windows as a guest on VirtualBox 7 on a Mac host run with acceptable performance? Is there something special about Windows running as a guest in VirtualBox that ArcaOS doesn't benefit from? Maybe it is a 64-bit thing?
Despite my earlier prediction that VMWare was the way to go, there also seems to be a network issue with VMWare on macOS 15 Sequoia (the latest macOS). After about 5 minutes the network in ArcaOS drops then might come back 15 mins or so later, then goes again. It's not an IP or MAC address clash which was my first thought. This does not happen with macOS 14 Sonoma, the previous version - it seems rock solid. Someone else has seen something similar I think:
https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-cloud-foundation/discussion/fusion-network-bridge-issue-sequoiaSo I'll continue to experiment and see if I can get closer to acceptable performance. I may possibly ask questions/open tickets at Virtual Box over the green turtle performance and VMWare over the network droppage with macOS 15 Sequoia.
It would be a shame if running ArcaOS on a Mac was no longer viable, even on an Intel Mac. Running on an Arm Mac is another nightmare entirely! I might be forced to buy myself an old ThinkPad to get my OS/2 fix ... but I have enough hardware already!
Thanks all.