alt Hacker News> have you actually done it?
Yes.
What do you mean by "works exactly the same?" The same as Ubuntu installed on an ARM laptop? No, there is not GUI, DE, and a lot of tools are stripped.
You can literally pull this down and get it up and running in minutes:
https://hub.docker.com/_/ubuntu/
Rosetta is not necessary to get this working either. Now, there maybe some warts with DNS that you might encounter depending on if you have a certain VPNs running, use dnsmasq, etc.. But there are potential workarounds for many issues.
If you want a full VM, I would recommend Lima/Colima. If you need a full VM with GUI and all, then maybe use something like Parallels, VMware Fusion, etc..
I mean like same as Ubuntu on an x86 laptop for general work. This is assuming you don't have any specific need for x86 binaries, but you also never know what might randomly require it. Would've tried it myself but I'm away from my Mac rn. I'll try again.
Last time I tried UTM specifically for reading an ext4-formatted SD card in my MacBook's internal slot, I couldn't get it to interface with the reader, but that works on Chromebooks' Linux VM supposedly.