qemuafl VS UTM

QEMU user-mode is a tool of QEMU that allows emulating just the userspace (in contrast to the normal mode where both the user-mode and the kernel are emulated). This is done by forwarding any syscalls from the target program to the host machine. The main benefits are improved performance and less complex enviroment but it sacrifices on the portability. AFL++ fork of QEMU uses this mechanism while adding coverage tracking and optional performance optimizations.

If you have TrollStore then install the HV version of UTM to try for yourself: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/releases/latest/download/UTM.HV.ipa

Researching a little showed that this is basically what can be expected running x86 emulation and the systems will just be wonky and slow, although it was running flawlessly, just slow.

There seem to be ways to use Rosetta2 inside a VM [0] to then translate binaries but I found no official support or documentation (using UTM+QEMU that was), this would be such a cool feature, at least there are discussions about it [1,2]

- [0] https://mybyways.com/blog/using-rosetta-in-a-utm-linux-vm-wi...

- [1] https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/discussions/4939

- [2] https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/issues/5460

UTM is open source too though: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM#license

UTM makes it easy to set up and manage macOS and Windows virtual machines. This can be especially useful for developers such as Tauri contributors who need to test their applications across multiple platforms, or for those looking to experiment with different operating systems without affecting their primary system.

If you don't need high performance and want to use the OS only occasionally, check UTM.app, at https://mac.getutm.app/ (or https://github.com/utmapp/UTM ). Free, open source.