Next Page »
  -  
May
02
2026
I want to run Ubuntu Virtual Machines on my Macbook
Posted by ebal at 15:17:14 in blog, planet_Sysadmin

I use multiple computers and multiple mobile devices. This is mostly because I like keeping my personal devices/accounts separated from my work-related things, also … company policy. The last 4 years I am using an apple macbook, it’s a managed and restricted device. With managed devices, a lot of features like virtualization, containers or even VPN, anything that has network access and many other functionality were restricted. Recently I got a replacement macbook, thanks to our IT, and now for the first time I can use my old device as an unmanaged macbook.

Oh, I missed a lot!

so_it_begins

Tart

To start my journey, I want to quickly spawn virtual machines (mostly ubuntu server) to test/run self hosted applications. I found Tart Virtualization to be excellent for this.

Tart is a virtualization toolset to build, run and manage macOS and Linux virtual machines on Apple Silicon.

To install and use tart is extremely easy:

brew install cirruslabs/cli/tart

tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-tahoe-base:latest tahoe-base
tart run tahoe-base

tart_tahoe

Ubuntu virtual machine

is very easy to setup an ubuntu virtual machine with tart, as an ubuntu image already exist

tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/ubuntu:24.04 ubuntu
tart set ubuntu --disk-size 20
tart run ubuntu

and the default credentials are:

Username: admin
Password: admin

caveat: Change them if you are going to use them in production.

tart_ubuntu

We can also change the default values

like cpu and/or memory settings, as disk size above

❯ tart set ubuntu --memory 8192
❯ tart set ubuntu --cpu 4

tart_specs

We can start the VM without graphics

❯ tart run ubuntu --no-graphics &

Is this vm running ?

✦ ❯ tart list | grep -i ubuntu
local  ubuntu                                      20   3    6 seconds ago running

OCI    ghcr.io/cirruslabs/ubuntu:24.04             20   5    14 hours ago  stopped
OCI    ghcr.io/cirruslabs/ubuntu@sha256:9e71b46... 20   5    14 hours ago  stopped

We can find the IP of the virtual machine

✦ ❯ tart ip ubuntu
192.168.64.2

… and we can ssh into the VM

✦ ❯ ssh admin@$(tart ip ubuntu)
admin@192.168.64.2's password:

tart_ssh

We can even add it to our tailscale network

I guess you already know how to add machines to your tailnet

tart_tailscale

and don’t forget to stop or delete your VMs if you do not need them

tart stop ubuntu
tart delete ubuntu

It works !
Evaggelos

Tag(s): tart, ubuntu, macbook, virtualization, apple
  -