For some clarity, see https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/microsoft-officially...

> These licensing problems haven't technically stopped people from running the Arm version of Windows on other hardware, including Apple Silicon Macs

> Microsoft is formally blessing Parallels as a way to run the Professional and Enterprise versions of Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs

Original source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-usin...

> Parallels® Desktop version 18 is an authorized solution

In other words, you could (unofficially) do this before, but now it's allowed according to the terms of your license.

> Original source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-usin...

It looks like Parallels has the same restrictions that you'd get from running Win11 ARM inside the UTM hypervisor on M1/M2 Macs (like I currently do): No WSL/WSA and no virtualization based security or sandboxes.

Why would you need WSL/WSA when Mac is already a *NIX?

Yes, macOS is a BSD - UNIX Certification and POSIX compliance is nice, but macOS does not behave the same way as Linux, which famously is not a Unix (it's even in the name), and POSIX compliance doesn't mean much today: even Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 were POSIX compliant with SFU.

From what I gather from people with far more experience than me: if you need a "Linux-compliant" environment you're better-off with WSL2 than macOS.

I'd argue you're better off with macOS + something like Parallels or, if you just need ubuntu, multipass. Introducing Windows to get a Linux-compliant environment is reaching around your back to scratch your elbow.

Lima[0] is also great if you just need command-line Linux.

[0]: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima