I'm curious why there is a restriction of 2010 or newer mac. Is it something in the CPU that's needed? I've 10.10.3 installed on a non supported mac and wanted to use this, but getting errors when I try the test Linux
You're looking for VMX. Here's an example from mine (highlighted the flag you're looking for):
machdep.cpu.features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM PBE SSE3 PCLMULQDQ DTES64 MON DSCPL * VMX * SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 FMA CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1 SSE4.2 x2APIC MOVBE POPCNT AES PCID XSAVE OSXSAVE SEGLIM64 TSCTMR AVX1.0 RDRAND F16C
The critical hardware feature they didn't all have is EPT[1], which may be required here in addition to VT-x.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Level_Address_Translati...
Hmm, turns out my Mac Pro does have VMX : machdep.cpu.features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM PBE SSE3 DTES64 MON DSCPL VMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM Maybe it's the EPT mentioned by @mrsteveman1