So, you'd like to use a Mac for SoftDes? Welcome to the civilized world! This guide will tell you how to do it. These instructions will work for either Intel or Apple Silicon/M1 Macs.
Here's how it works: Unlike Windows, macOS is Unix on the inside. (Unix and Linux are, for the sake of this class, interchangeable.) So instead of juggling Linux/Ubuntu inside Windows, macOS can serve the role of both.
Warning: Do this at your own risk. Windows 10 on an Olin Laptop is the only officially supported platform for SoftDes. This is simply from my experimentation.
You'll want to have the normal setup instructions open too. They have lots of good information and explaination (most of which doesn't change for Mac). In particular, all of the "check" stages are the same.