Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

We just open-sourced Lume - a tool we built after hitting walls with existing virtualization options on Apple Silicon. No GUI, no complex stacks - just a single binary that lets you spin up macOS or Linux VMs via CLI or API.

Why we built Lume: - Run native macOS VMs in 1 command, using Apple Virtualization.Framework: `lume run macos-sequoia-vanilla:latest`

- Prebuilt images on https://ghcr.io/trycua (macOS, Ubuntu on ARM)

- API server to manage VMs programmatically `POST /lume/vms`

- A python SDK on github.com/trycua/pylume

Run prebuilt macOS images in just 1 step: lume run macos-sequoia-vanilla:latest

How to Install:

brew tap trycua/lume

brew install lume

You can also download the `lume.pkg.tar.gz` archive from the latest release https://github.com/trycua/lume/releases, extract it, and install the package manually.

Local API Server: `lume` exposes a local HTTP API server that listens on `http://localhost:3000/lume`, enabling automated management of VMs.

lume serve

For detailed API documentation, please refer to API Reference(https://github.com/trycua/lume/blob/main/docs/API-Reference....).

HN devs - would love raw feedback on the API design and whether this solves your Apple Silicon VM pain points. What would make you replace UTM/Multipass/Docker Desktop with this?

Repo: https://github.com/trycua/lume Python SDK: github.com/trycua/pylume Discord for direct feedback: https://discord.gg/8p56E2KJ

Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon
github.com

You can, with ish (https://ish.app). It is a bit slow though and doesn't support the newest releases. (Well and by default it runs Alpine instead of Debian)

UTM? https://getutm.app/

Is macOS up to scratch to be used as a server these days? Last I checked it would always run into trouble / randomly reboot / become unavailable whenever a new OS update became available. Admittedly this is about 2 years ago.

If so, this would be great. Particularly to repurpose older macs.

I read GPU and USB passthrough somewhere and did not believe it