Virtualization on Apple Mac M1

Photo by Lennart Uecker on Unsplash

With new Apple M1 processor, we now have a very powerful machine on our laps but because this architecture is a new milestone in technology, we are having a hard time as many of the tools we use are not available with ARM architecture presently.

One of the bigger problem faced by many developers and people who love to use other Operating Systems with MAC hardware is virtualisation. As all the named companies who provide most of virtualisation softwares have not developed the new version which can support ARM architecture.

But I found a solution to this while recently exploring web for the same.

UTM employs Apple’s Hypervisor virtualization framework to run ARM64 operating systems on Apple Silicon at near native speeds. On Intel Macs, x86/x64 operating system can be virtualized. In addition, lower performance emulation is available to run x86/x64 on Apple Silicon as well as ARM64 on Intel.

Go to https://mac.getutm.app and hit on download.

After downloading, install UTM virtual machine and start it.

Also download the Ubuntu ARM server image for running in this VM from here : https://ubuntu.com/download/server/arm

After you start the UTM virtual machine, you will land on the screen below.

UTM Virtual Machine

Click on create a new virtual machine and then the following screen will come.

Click on Virtualise and the following screen will appear.

Select Linux and continue.

Click on Browse to import the ubuntu arm image downloaded above and click Continue. After this continue with Linux configurations and click Save on the below screen.

After this you will see a screen as below. Since I already have the image installed, you can see two images on the left, but for you it will be only one. Here click on the play button on the centre of screen.

After this proceed with the steps to install ubuntu on your VM.

After the installation is complete you need to restart the VM. For this first you have to eject the image media which you have imported. Hit on top right cd button and click eject. After this hit the reverse play button on top and restart the machine.

This will install the console version. To install the GUI follow the below steps ones the console version is installed.

Run the following command to download any updates pending for the system.

sudo apt update

Now we are going to install tasksel which will help us in getting the GUI for ubuntu.

sudo apt install tasksel
sudo tasksel install ubuntu desktop

The above command will download the ubuntu GUI for you. If this fails simply re-run the command.

sudo reboot

Now after rebooting you will see the GUI for ubuntu.

Cheers :D