Tart - Linux virtualization on Apple Silicon

Thomas Durand

So far, I was using Asahi Linux (Fedora 39) on my MacBook Air M2 for
programming in C (for instance, valgrind is not available on macOS).
But switching to Asahi requires a reboot (dual boot), and even if Asahi’s team did an
outstanding work: in my opinion battery life (for the moment) is still a big drawback compared to macOS.

That is why I was eager to test Tart, which uses Apple’s native
Virtualization.Framework allowing close to native performance compared to
Virtualbox, Parallel, or UTM…


To be honest, I’m quite impressed with Tart. The installation was quick, easy and seamless. With high performance virtualizing Ubuntu 22.04, here are the commands that I used :


brew install cirruslabs/cli/tart
tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/ubuntu:latest ubuntu
tart run ubuntu


And voila! It really is as simple as that.

Login: admin / Password: admin

I no longer see myself dual booting with such an easy and performant tool.

You can also replace the second command according to your needs:

Debian
tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/debian:latest

Fedora
tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/fedora:latest

More info: https://tart.run/quick-start/