UTM Install
There are a few software options when it comes to running virtual machines on macOS. The most popular and well known virtualization software for macOS is Parallels. VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox are other popular options. Parallels and VMWare Fusion now support M1 chips, but neither are free and open source. VirtualBox is free and open source, but doesn’t support M1 chips.
That’s where UTM comes in. UTM is a macOS and iOS app that is based off QEMU, a decades old, free and open source emulation software that is widely used and actively maintained. It employs Apple’s Hypervisor virtualization framework to run ARM64 operating systems on Apple Silicon at near native speeds. UTM is free and open source, but you can buy it from the macOS app store for $9.99 which directly funds the development of UTM.
I decided to purchase UTM from the app store to help fund development. Installing and setting up my first virtual machine in UTM was super easy.
Once downloaded and installed, I opened the UTM app and selected to browse the UTM Gallery. The gallery contains pre-configured images for popular operating systems. To test out UTM, I selected the Debian 10.4 (minimal) image.
From the Debian 10.4 (minimal) page, I selected Open in UTM. The OS image began to download automatically in UTM.
Once the image was download and ready, I started up the VM and logged in with the pre-configured credentials.
And just like that, I had a working installation of Debian that I could use on my M1 MacBook. It’s also possible to configure and run virtual machines from scratch with UTM, which is something that will be the topic of future posts. But the UTM gallery makes it super easy to get up and running with different operating systems if you just want to try them out.
What is your favorite virtualization software to run on macOS? What’s your experience been like using UTM? Let me know by responding to this post, or you can email me at cypherbean@protonmail.com.
