Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!
Multipass vs LXD¶
LXD supports both containers and VMs while multipass supports only (Ubuntu) VMs.
LXD is more lightweight compared to multipass.
LXD does not require CPU virtualization while multipass relies on CPU virtualization.
Multipass is very user-friendly while LXD requires some manual configuration and is much harder to use.
General Tips¶
You can consider Multipass as a lightweight Ubuntu specific Docker equivalence.
Installation¶
sudo snap install multipass
Find available images¶
multipass find
Launch a fresh instance of the current Ubuntu LTS¶
multipass launch ubuntu
Check out the running instances¶
multipass list
Learn more about the VM instance you just launched¶
multipass info dancing-chipmunk
Sharing data with the instance¶
The recommended way to share data between your host and the instance is the mount command:
:::bash
multipass mount $HOME keen-yak
multipass info keen-yak
…
Mounts: /home/ubuntu => /home/ubuntu
From this point on /home/ubuntu will be available inside the instance. Use umount to unmount it again and you can change the target by passing it after the instance name:
:::bash
multipass umount keen-yak
multipass mount $HOME keen-yak:/some/path
multipass info keen-yak
…
Mounts: /home/michal => /some/path
You can also use copy-files to just copy files around - prefix the path with <name>: if it’s inside an instance:
:::bash
multipass copy-files keen-yak:/etc/crontab keen-yak:/etc/fstab .Connect to a running instance¶
multipass shell dancing-chipmunk
Run commands inside an instance from outside¶
multipass exec dancing-chipmunk -- lsb_release -a
Stop an instance to save resources¶
multipass stop dancing-chipmunk
Delete the instance¶
multipass delete dancing-chipmunk
References¶
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Use Canonical’s Multipass to display Linux GUI applications on macOS desktop