Running Quartus on Mac without VM Software

The requirements for running Quartus under Linux are a bit more than a unix prompt. You need also a bunch of libraries. Most of them can be found for Macs (including X11) but would require to recompile the software anyway. AFAIK the BSDs are the only operating systems (other than Linux) that are able to run a Linux binary without recompiling. This isn't possible on Mac OS.

If you want performance the best option is to install Windows or Linux in Bootcamp and boot on that OS instead of Mac OS. This is what I'm doing on my MacBook. The next best option is a virtual machine, using Parallels, VirtualBox, VMWare or QEmu. The main problem is that you'll have less memory for Quartus, and Quartus loooves memory ;)