Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

2 months ago 2

17 April 2025
vm,
utm,
arm,
macbook,
apple silicon

"UTM is an app for running other operating systems on your iPhone or iPad. It is not for running iOS on other systems. This allows you, among other things, to run Windows or Linux on your iOS device at a usable speed." – UTM Website

In this article, I'll show you how to use UTM VMs virtual machines to create Linux development environments on Apple Silicon.

This approach builds on the technique I described in here.

Dependencies #

First, install UTM using Homebrew: brew install --cask utm.

Then, install brew install cdrtools, which provides mkisofs. We'll use that tool to create an init.iso - our seed script for initializing the VM.

We need a bunch of tools and images.

Fedora Cloud images mirror.bahnhof.net.
1. aarch64 Fedora-Cloud-Base-Generic-42-1.1.aarch64.qcow2
2. x86_64 Fedora-Cloud-Base-Generic-42-1.1.x86_64.qcow2
Ubuntu Cloud images cdimage.ubuntu.com.
1. aarch64 plucky-preinstalled-server-arm64.img.xz
2. x86_64 plucky-preinstalled-server-amd64.img.xz

Cloud-Init #

We’ll use cloud-init scripts to bootstrap the VM with the tools and settings needed for development - things like git, jq, go, docker, and more. We'll also use it to provision an SSH key for easy access.

user-data

system_info: default_user: name: fedora users: - name: fedora sudo: ['ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL'] groups: users, admin, docker shell: /bin/bash ssh_authorized_keys: - ssh-rsa AAAAB3Nza... groups: - docker packages: - curl - wget - git - jq - gcc - clang chpasswd: list: | fedora:password expire: False resize_rootfs: True write_files: - path: /etc/sysctl.d/enabled_ipv4_forwarding.conf content: | net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding=1 - path: /opt/go.sh owner: fedora:fedora permissions: '0700' content: | #!/usr/bin/env bash set -ex wget https://go.dev/dl/go1.24.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz -O go.tar.gz sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzvf go.tar.gz rm -rf go echo 'export GOROOT=/usr/local/go' >> /home/fedora/.bashrc echo 'export GOPATH=$HOME/.go' >> /home/fedora/.bashrc echo 'export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$GOROOT/bin:$PATH' >> /home/fedora/.bashrc runcmd: - [dnf, config-manager, addrepo, --from-repofile="https://download.docker.com/linux/fedora/docker-ce.repo"] - [dnf, install, docker-ce, docker-ce-cli, containerd.io] - [systemctl, enable, --now, docker] - /opt/go.sh

Generate init.iso (mkisofs is a part of cdrtools):

touch meta-data mkisofs -output init.iso -volid cidata -joliet -rock {user-data,meta-data}

Create VM #

Create VM, chose Emulate:

Chose Other:

No changes in Hardware:

Use 8GB disk, we dont need it and will remove it later.

In Summary name the VM and check Open VM Settings:

Uncheck UEFI Boot:

Remove Display, Sound with rigth mouse click, and add Serial -> Built-In:

Remove created Drive, and add new one VirtiO, Import the Fedora-Cloud-Base-Generic-42-1.1.x86_64.qcow2

Create another one Drive -> VirtiO, import the init.iso

Run VM, if everything goes right you'll see boot terminal, like on the image below:

Wait until the login screen appears. The default username is fedora and the password is password, as defined in our cloud-init script.

Give it a moment after logging in cloud-init script. will need some time to finish setting everything up.

After the VM has finished initializing, power it off and remove the init.iso drive—it only needs to run during the first boot.

You can check the output of the cloud-init scripts with sudo cat /var/log/cloud-init-output.log

Tip:

To create a VM for Apple Silicon (aarch64), follow these steps:

Choose Virtualize, since Apple Silicon is ARM-based.
Use arm64 cloud images.
For Ubuntu, the process is almost the same - except you don’t need to disable UEFI boot.
Don’t forget to extract the *.img.xz file before using it.

Happy coding!