Lima: Another Way Of Spinning Up Simple, Integrated Linux VMs on macOS

Making some rounds this weekend is the "Lima" project. No, not to be confused with the open-source Arm Mali reverse-engineered project of the same name, but rather an effort to be like an unofficial "macOS subsystem for Linux."

Lima tries to be like what WSL is for Linux on Windows but instead to macOS. This unofficial open-source project though is basically about spinning up simple Linux virtual machines under macOS that are integrated well into the user's environment with automatic file sharing and other bits for a quick/easy and pleasant user experience.

Lima provides automatic file sharing using reverse SSHFS, QEMU is being used with the HVF accelerator for virtualization, and there is automatic port forwarding. Lima works both for macOS on Intel and ARM / Apple Silicon hardware. Lima has been tested using both Fedora and Ubuntu guests.

Those interested in learning more about this open-source project can visit GitHub.