m1-utm-linux

A step-by-step guide on how to run Linux in UTM on M1 Macs

Currently supported guides:

guest architecture	guest Linux flavour
native (arm64)	Arch Linux

Skip the pleasantries and send me to the instructions!

What

So you’ve obtained an M1 Mac, and you’d like to harness the power of Linux by way of virtualization.

Maybe you’re doing work that involves syscalls, maybe you prefer a distinct boundary between your browsing software and your devving software, or maybe you want to try it because you can.

This guide will help you set up a Linux VM using UTM, in a way that should be stable for in-band guest OS updates.

Why

You could download a version of Linux from the UTM gallery, but:

• some gallery images (e.g. ArchLinux ARM) contain multiple drives
  • these gallery images make it difficult to upgrade the VM in-band via pacman -Syu and the like
  • the method of installation listed below emulates a real OS install on one disk file, thus hopefully making the upgrade procedure smoother and more future-proof
• you’re trusting the gallery image hasn’t been tampered with
  • while I have full faith in the developers to not trojan horse anything (after all, we are using the emulation software they developed), I would prefer to see through my OS’ genesis, allowing for both customization and inspection; the same may apply to you

How (instructions)

Prerequisites

• macOS with an M1 processor
  • if you’re on a Mac, typing uname -m into the terminal should show you arm64
• UTM
  • get it from their website at https://mac.getutm.app

Per-flavour Linux instructions

Please visit the following sub-pages for guides on each supported flavour.

• arm64 Arch Linux