Canonical brings Ubuntu to M1 Macs
Canonical has unveiled an updated Multipass, which makes it easy to run Linux on Apple’s latest machines.
Last year, Apple launched a range of MacBooks and Macs that run on its own ARM-based M1 SoCs, in a break from relying on Intel hardware. It also recently launched two new MacBook Pros that come with either the M1 Pro or M1 Max chips, which are vastly more powerful versions of the M1.
Coinciding nicely with this launch, Canonical has announced an update to its Multipass project (https://multipass.run). This will enable people to run Linux on Apple’s M1 hardware via an Ubuntu virtual machine, which can launch with a single command. According to Canonical in a blog post that can be read at https://bit.ly/ lxf284ubuntum1, “developers on M1 can now get running on Linux in as little as 20 seconds.”
Because the M1 Macs run on a new architecture, Linux support via virtual machine tools such as VirtualBox has been spotty at best, with tools either not being compatible with M1, or requiring a lot of configuration to get it working. With Multipass, Canonical is offering a free VM solution that doesn’t need any setting up. Multipass 1.8.0 also bring new features such as Aliases, which enables people to tie VM commands to the host OS, so software within the VMs can be run from the host terminal, giving “users a near-native experience for any Linux program,” according to Canonical.
No w that M1 Macs are supported, Canonical is hoping it will bring more developers to Linux, and will allow them to use Multipass as their development environment regardless of the computing platform or operating system they use. You can find out more about what’s new in the Multipass 1.8.0 release notes at https://bit.ly/ lxf284multipass.