SimpleVM VS ACVM

The battery life on the MacBook M1 is pretty amazing but not having Virtualbox has been a pain and we are exploring options for our new team. I have mostly worked for companies with actual teams dedicated to providing build tools.

Past attempts to Dockerize all the infrastructure dependencies (e.g. we run our own database and DNS servers) and tying all of that with the build scripts was deemed more effort than its worth so that never quite got going. Maybe its different scratch?

I have tried a bunch of these projects so while interesting I'm not sure about building workflows around them:

https://mac.getutm.app/

https://github.com/KhaosT/SimpleVM

https://github.com/danielrfry/toyvm

https://github.com/evansm7/vftool

https://multipass.run/install

https://github.com/features/codespaces

https://medium.com/@paulrobu/how-to-run-ubuntu-22-04-vms-on-apple-m1-arm-based-systems-for-free-c8283fb38309

I know architecture differences will cause pain, hell here we are already. I think everyone will benefit from crowd sourcing experiences and hopefully we can save each other chunks of life thrown away.

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    What tool do you use to {edit code, build artifacts, run unit tests, deploy artifacts, run e2e tests}

https://github.com/KhaosT/SimpleVM

https://github.com/ubenmackin/ACVM is a good free alternative, arguably better than utm. Parallels is unmatched though

If you want something non-commercial, I've been using ACVM and UTM (UTM exclusively, these days) to run ARM Debian and Ubuntu.

If you absolutely need to boot into Debian, booting on Apple Silicon Macs isn't possible currently, and would be up to the Debian community to eventually support. If you'd be willing to use a VM, I've been using ACVM and UTM since I got my M1 in 2020 to run Ubuntu and Debian for ARM. (There's also Parallels Desktop for Apple Silicon which I've personally used for Ubuntu; I can't imagine there's any reason it wouldn't work for Debian for ARM.)

I use (and prefer) ACVM, which is another front end for QEMU which is an open source emulator and virtualization environment that on its own can be a hassle to set up and use (which is why things like ACVM and UTM exist). Try them both and see what you like better. ACVM feels a little faster, for me. UTM is probably likely to be better supported, as we go forward.

You can run other ARM operating systems in virtualization. I've been using ACVM and UTM to run ARM versions of Debian and Ubuntu in QEMU. Running Windows on ARM is still wonky, and largely relies on Microsoft actually providing better support for WOA for virtual machines like Parallels or QEMU. You can't easily boot into Windows or Linux like you could on x86 Macs, but Asahi Linux is working on a version of Linux that will boot on ARM Macs; it's very much in beta. Use at your own risk. (I haven't needed Linux on the bare metal in ages; virtualization works fine for me. YMMV.)

I don't have a Mac Studio yet, but I'd been using ACVM to run ARM builds of Ubuntu and Debian on an M1 MacBook Pro. I've recently switched to UTM, as it seems to be more actively developed.

This is Ubuntu, running in ACVM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v8CsVLZRJQ

I use Ben Mackin's fork of ACVM over on GitHub, to run ARM versions of Ubuntu.

For Linux on M1, I use ARM Ubuntu in a Qemu VM, which I manage using Ben Mackin's fork of ACVM, available on Github.

Didn't test, but the release notes mention 3D acceleration for Linux is still not available. So, it depends on your definition of 'working'. You might be better of using https://github.com/ubenmackin/ACVM.