We strongly recommend ARM64 images for performance reasons. In the case of Linux, all you have to do is click the “play” button and your VM will begin. Select the UTM file you downloaded and it will be imported. Click “Download” to save the configuration to disk, then open UTM and click File > Import Virtual Machine. Simply head to the Gallery page and select the VM you would like to install. You can also use this Gallery feature to download ready-to-run VMs for Windows 10 and 11, Windows XP, and macOS 9 but you’ll need to provide your own disk images.

This is by far the easiest route to take, with support for some popular distros like Arch Linux (ARM), Debian (ARM), Ubuntu (x86-64 and ARM).įor Linux and similar open source projects, the VM downloads are provided with everything you need including the disk image required to run the operating system. UTM provides some ready-made VMs that you can download and install, which lets you hit the ground running and not worry about configuring your own machine. It’s up to you what you choose, but you’ll need to match your version to your system architecture in the instructions below.

Note: You can use UTM to run ARM64 versions of Linux at “near native” speeds, while lower performance emulation can be achieved in 32-bit and 64-bit x86 versions. To get started, download UTM and a Linux distribution of your choosing, then get started on creating a virtual machine with UTM.

You can use this app to emulate a large number of processor architectures, including x86-64 (“proper” desktop Linux) as well as ARM and PowerPC.

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