Linux virtual machines, with a focus on running containers

1. lima

   1 116 17,073 9.8 Go

   Linux virtual machines, with a focus on running containers

   

   See "Adopters" section of the GitHub README:

   https://github.com/lima-vm/lima?tab=readme-ov-file#adopters

2. InfluxDB

   www.influxdata.com featured

   InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

   

3. orbstack

   2 52 6,746 2.8 Shell

   Fast, light, simple Docker containers & Linux machines

   

   I recommend checking out OrbStack[0] for containers and VMs on MacOS.

   It’s really, really, really awesome and performant. And it seems to be a one-man show. Really impressive.

   Most I’ve shown it to have very quickly switched to it.

   (I’m completely unaffiliated, just a happy user)

   [0]: https://orbstack.dev/

4. colima

   3 126 22,640 8.7 Go

   Container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup

   

   I'm surprised this says "with focus on running containers", I thought that would be colima, which uses Lima but is a separate project. https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

   Lima is more of a nice way to run a Linux VM on Mac in a way that integrates the guest and the host systems to a good degree by default. It wraps either QEMU or Apple's VZ framework.

   For a more traditional VM GUI, there's https://mac.getutm.app/ which is a completely separate project that also wraps QEMU or VZ.

5. macpine

   4 18 963 5.7 Go

   Lightweight Linux VMs on MacOS

   

   For MacOS, Macpine has a similar premise: https://github.com/beringresearch/macpine

   With a view to use lightweight Linux VMs (alpine) to:

   * Easily spin up and manage lightweight Alpine Linux environments.

   * Use tiny VMs to take advantage of containerisation technologies, including Incus, LXD and Docker.

   * Build and test software on x86_64 and aarch64 systems.

6. nixpkgs

   5 1,031 20,307 10.0 Nix

   Nix Packages collection & NixOS

   

   I agree NixOS + docker/podman-compose is a good compromise but one has to be aware NixOS still run podman as root (1) [0]. What is very scary and defeat the purpose of rootless container.

   - [0] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/259770

7. multipass

   6 135 8,277 9.9 C++

   Multipass orchestrates virtual Ubuntu instances

   

   Since we're here. What do people use when they need to test their software installs well on naked Ubuntu Server of some version? To not do manual setup in VMWare, can be Linux-only.

   I've found Multipass https://multipass.run/ by Canonical and I wonder if anyone recommends it.

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