I'm not an everyday linux user but I'm not a novice either. I need ubuntu for a software project and it's easiest for me to use a traditional virtual machine (although I'm considering multipass).
I'm also on an arm version of macOS and VMWare's "tech preview" was my best option. The vm install and everything went reasonably well, but in order to get display resolutions greater than 1024x768 VMWare advises to update to the 5.14+ kernel. However, there appears to be a problem, described here:
mainline kernel now depends on libc6 2.33, non-installable in focal?
Summary: the kernel headers rely on a libc6 version newer than what 20.04 provides, so the headers don't get properly installed, causing the boot process to fail.
There looks to be kernel offerings from tuxinvader, but I can't tell from the PPA if there are arm64 options. Besides, this isn't a great long-term solution.
Another option is to compile a custom kernel, but I'd like to avoid that if there are better options.
After an ubuntu upgrade my kernel is at 5.13, but I need 5.14+ in order to make this a proper workstation with better resolutions.
Is there anything I can do short of compiling my own kernel (or look for a non-vmware solution)? Seems strange that after many months this hasn't been resolved, so I'm making sure I'm not missing something.
EDIT: Here is the information requested by @n0rbert:
$ uname -a
Linux <hostname> 5.13.0-28-generic #31~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP <datestamp> aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux
$ dpkg -l | grep 'linux-image'
linux-image-5.11.0-41-generic Signed (arm64)
linux-image-5.13.0-28-generic Signed (arm64)
linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04 Generic (arm64)