This document summarizes Lima, an open-source tool for running Linux virtual machines and containers on macOS. Lima provides automatic host filesystem sharing and port forwarding, and integrates with container engines like Docker and container orchestrators like Kubernetes. It uses QEMU or macOS's Virtualization.framework as the hypervisor and supports networking and storage drivers. Templates are provided for common Linux distributions and container tools.

1. Linux virtual machines for running containers (on macOS)
● Automatic host filesystem sharing
● Automatic port forwarding
● Built-in integration for containerd
(and Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Apptainer, ...)
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https://lima-vm.io/
$ brew install lima
$ limactl start
$ lima nerdctl run -p 80:80 nginx

2. How it works
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l Hypervisor
QEMU (default) or Virtualization.framework
l Intel-on-ARM binary executor
qemu-user (default) or Rosetta 2 (faster)
l Filesystem sharing
reverse sshfs (default), virtio-9p-pci, or virtiofs (faster)

3. How it works
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l Network
QEMU’s usermode networking (default)
or socket_vmnet (for VM-to-VM communication, etc. with sudo)
l Port forwarding
Implemented by watching /proc/net/tcp, iptables, and
Kubernetes services

4. Built-in templates
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l Distros
almalinux, alpine, archlinux, centos-stream, debian,
opensuse, oraclelinux, rocky, ubuntu, ...
l Container engines
apptainer, docker, docker-rootful, podman, podman-rootful,
...
l Container orchestration
faasd, k3s, k8s, nomad
$ limactl start --name=default template://docker

5. Recent updates
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l v0.13: Lima joined the CNCF Sandbox
l v0.14: Added the support for Virtualization.framework, virtiofs, and
Rosetta 2 for Linux
l v0.15: In-place YAML modification using yq expressions (similar to jq)
$ limactl start --set='.cpus = 2 | .memory = "2GiB"'
$ limactl start --name=default template://experimental/vz

6. Roadmap (tentative)
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● Enable VM-to-VM communication without the host root
privilege (PR #1383)
● Support connecting local VMs to IaaS networks
● Switch the default hypervisor to Virtualization.framework
● Switch the default filesystem driver to virtiofs (for
Virtualization.framework) and virtio-9p-pci (for QEMU)

7. Third party FLOSS projects based on Lima
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Lima-GUI https://github.com/afbjorklund/lima-gui
Colima https://github.com/abiosoft/colima
Rancher Desktop https://rancherdesktop.io/
Finch https://github.com/runfinch/finch

8. Join the community!
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● GitHub: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/
● Slack: https://slack.cncf.io/ (Channel: #lima)