multipass

Multipass is a tool that lets you start and stop Ubuntu virtual machines on your laptop or desktop with a single command. A virtual machine is a self-contained operating system running inside your main operating system, isolated from everything else. Multipass manages the technical details of creating and running those machines so you do not have to configure virtualization software manually.

It works on Linux, macOS, and Windows. On each platform it uses the virtualization technology built into that operating system: KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows, and QEMU on macOS. VirtualBox is also supported as an alternative on Windows and macOS. Multipass downloads Ubuntu images automatically and keeps them up to date, so you always have a current version ready to launch.

The basic workflow is straightforward. You run a command to launch a new instance and it starts in seconds. Each instance gets a name, an IP address, its own disk and memory allocation, and a full Ubuntu environment. You can open a shell inside it, run commands against it from outside without entering the shell, copy files in and out, take snapshots to save state at a point in time, and delete instances when you are done. Multiple instances can run simultaneously.

Multipass also supports cloud-init, a standard format for describing how a cloud server should be configured when it first starts. This lets you script the setup of an instance, which is useful for testing deployment configurations on your local machine before sending them to a real cloud provider.

Beyond plain Ubuntu, Multipass can launch preconfigured environments called blueprints that come with specific software already installed. The available list includes environments set up for Docker, Minikube (a local Kubernetes environment), Jellyfin media server, and ROS robotics development.

The project is maintained by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and is released under the GNU General Public License v3.