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Ask HN: Best way to run Linux VMs on M1 Mac with fileSharing/shared networking?

2 points by princevegeta89 ↗ HN
Tried Parallels, but seemed to expensive. Tried UTM, felt too slow. And then, VMWare fusion has file sharing issues in my experience.

Are there any other programs that allow running VMs via virtualization (arm64) instead of emulation? Something like WSL for windows.

11 comments

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vhodges
I haven't done it yet, but I am planning to use UTM. Dumb question, did you run an ARM64 image or a x86 on utm?
lesserknowndan
I’d suggest trying out Docker. The Docker app itself is free.

I’ve been using Docker on macos for the past couple of months and found it extremely flexible. Docker also supports mapping within-container locations to the host filesystem.

princevegeta89
Docker is only for containers, right? I wanted full VMs.
lesserknowndan
It depends on your point of view. Apparently, on macos, Docker can make use of the macos virtualisation framework, which runs the containerised OS on top of a virtualised kernel.

That said, if you specifically need to run a specific full operating system, then yes, something like VMWare or Parallels is likely to be more appropriate.

The key question is - why do you want full VMs? For example, you can use a Ubuntu base image and then use apt to install any other packages you need in order to get a full virtual server running.

I think it would be worth your while to go through the Docker tutorials to get a sense of what it is capable of.

jrjsmrtn
Although I have a Parallel license, I'm mostly using UTM. I have Debian/Ubuntu, NixOS, SUSE, Windows 11 VMs all running natively on ARM.
princevegeta89
How are the file sharing capabilities, especially with Linux?
sigjuice
UTM should be running arm64 Linux guests using virtualization and NOT emulation. I have been running arm64 Linux guests on M1/M2 Macs and it is not at all slow.

Does your Linux guest have the "Use Hypervisor" setting turned on?