PApabs3·Jul 26, 2025
There is also a simple macOS Hypervisor.framework wrapper here:
https://github.com/evansm7/vftool
In Ask HN: Why is virtualization still not solved?evansm7
vftool
Objective-C2020–2025
evansm7 / vftool
vftool
A simple macOS Virtualisation.framework wrapper
15Distinct people
16Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A simple macOS Virtualisation.framework wrapper
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- khaost/simplevm · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year16 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-11-26 14:50:23 UTC to 2025-07-26 02:32:28 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
16 sourcesAs an alternative, here's a really minimalist command-line wrapper to run VMs in the macOS Virtualization.framework: https://github.com/evansm7/vftool
In Lima: A nice way to run Linux VMs on MacDoes vftool use https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization or https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor ?
https://github.com/evansm7/vftool appears to indicate the former, but I thought the latter was required for rosetta so interested to try this.
EDIT - looks like I had this backwards, vftool indeed supports https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization which is the newer framework that supports Rosetta. The older framework is https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor
In Apple Virtualization FrameworkI've been using vftool with arm64 Ubuntu server cloudimg. Directly uses the virtualization framework, easy to work with once you get it going.
https://github.com/evansm7/vftool
my command:
vftool -k vmlinuz -i initrd -d disk.img -p 4 -m 2048 -a "console=hvc0 irqaffinity=0 root=/dev/vda"
In Poll: What's the best laptop for Linux these days?Ask HN: MacBook M1 development workflow?
The battery life on the MacBook M1 is pretty amazing but not having Virtualbox has been a pain and we are exploring options for our new team. I have mostly worked for companies with actual teams dedicated to providing build tools.
Past attempts to Dockerize all the infrastructure dependencies (e.g. we run our own database and DNS servers) and tying all of that with the build scripts was deemed more effort than its worth so that never got off the ground. Maybe its different from scratch?
I have tried a bunch of these projects so while interesting I'm not sure about building workflows around them:
https://mac.getutm.app/
https://github.com/KhaosT/SimpleVM
https://github.com/danielrfry/toyvm
https://github.com/evansm7/vftool
https://multipass.run/install
https://github.com/features/codespaces
https://medium.com/@paulrobu/how-to-run-ubuntu-22
Read the rest
-04-vms-on-apple-m1-arm-based-systems-for-free-c8283fb38309
I know architecture differences will cause pain, hell here we are already. I think everyone will benefit from crowd sourcing experiences and hopefully we can save each other chunks of life thrown away.
==
What tool do you use to {edit code, build artifacts, run unit tests, deploy artifacts, run e2e tests}
Why do you use X?
What where you using before switching to X?
When did you switch and how much did it cost you in terms of $ licensing and workflow changes?
What else did you consider before choosing X?
What did you not like about about the alternatives?
==
1. I develop primarily in Java for services that get deployed on Linux boxes
2. Sublime Text used to be my default but I begrudgingly accepted IntelliJ in my previous job since we used Java
3. An IntelliJ license was provided by the company so the powers that be handled that side of the equation so I have no $ value.
4. I inherited the previous development setup so not sure what the adoption cost looked like
5. We have scripts that wrap Ant tasks to locally run "integration tests" but so much is mocked out it doesn't match reality so you can't green light anything until you have actually deployed and tested the code in staging
6. We deploy our code to EC2 instances for e2e testing since there are infrastructure services we need as mentioned earlier e.g. the database, memcache etc
Linux can be run on Virtualization.framework on Mac M1 without qemu [1].
Would it be possible to run FreeBSD similarly without qemu?
[1] https://github.com/evansm7/vftool
In How to run FreeBSD 13 in QEMU on Apple Silicon MacVMs work. Qemu is working with patches. You have to build it though. None of the releases seems to be patched yet. There is an early preview of Parallels. Both Linux and Windows on Arm are working. Docker has an early release as well. There are few prebuilt projects on Github too:
https://github.com/evansm7/vftool
https://github.com/KhaosT/SimpleVM
https://github.com/ubenmackin/ACVM
In Ask HN: How do you like developing on an M1 Mac so far?I needed to add a persistent network configuration (which I didn't really figure out -- I was okay with starting an interface manually. I also had to re-generate the SSH host keys for some reason.
In order to do these, I loaded the image in initramfs (basically started the VM w/o specifying root=/dev/vda as the command line argument). Then I mounted /dev/vda and chroot'd to it. Then I could change the root password to something that I knew, and setup the keys / config.
So, instead of tweaking the setup script, I ended up making the changes manually, but it should be scriptable.
I also was able to use the Ubuntu kernel/initrd to load a Debian 10 image as well. The default Debian 10 cloud image doesn't include the necessary kernel modules (virtio_console might be the only one necessary to add).
I've spent a few days testing out this and the
Read the rest
linked vftool (https://github.com/evansm7/vftool) to try to get a Debian VM. It's not an easy thing, but it did eventually work. I ended up corrupting the disk image though, so that wasn't fun.
In order to do this on my Mac w/o needing a Linux machine, I installed ext4fuse so that I could mount raw disk images and mount partitions. I followed instructions from this GH issue, which was a great help.
https://github.com/evansm7/vftool/issues/2
I recently got myself a M1 Mac and I want to run Linux on it. By reading the docker M1 tech preview release (https://www.docker.com/blog/download-and-try-the-tech-previe...), I was made aware of the existence of Virtualization.framework on recent macOS releases.
Virtualization.framework provides 99% of the building blocks for running a Linux VM on a Mac, but there’s no off-the-shelf CLI for running a VM.
Inspired by https://github.com/evansm7/vftool, I wrote another CLI (vmcli) with some more features (better termios handling / escape sequence detection) in Swift, and build a script (vmctl) to daemon-ize vmcli and help manage VMs. I also made a script for provisioning a Ubuntu VM, so you can run a Ubuntu VM from scratch in minutes.
In Show HN: Vmctl/Vmcli – Easily Run Linux VMs on M1 MacsThanks to another commenter I found https://github.com/evansm7/vftool/issues/2#issuecomment-7354... which is exactly what I needed for Ubuntu 20.04: the idea to use cloud images which bypasses the silly installer.
In Vftool runs Linux virtual machines in macOS Big SurIt's worth jumping directly to some issue comments,
https://github.com/evansm7/vftool/issues/2#issuecomment-7354...
as this doesn't seem to work right away for popular options, e.g. I tried the Alpine aarch64 net boot and nothing happens.
In Vftool runs Linux virtual machines in macOS Big SurVftool runs Linux virtual machines in macOS Big Sur
195 points · Open discussionCommand-Line Wrapper to Run VMs in the macOS Big Sur Virtualization.framework
2 points · Open discussionVirtualization.framework Tool (Vftool)
1 points · Open discussionVftool: Minimal Wrapper for Virtualization.framework to Run Linux VMs on M1
3 points · Open discussionShowing the 15 most recent of 16 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.