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

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

#41

Post by thewebguyd »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #40

I know the Mac hardware is pretty trick, but man, I do most of my dev on Linux and have a Framework Laptop (AMD) running Ubuntu; it's just really nice for dev stuff to work the same way it does on our production environment... Also, the frequency and size and time to install MacOS updates - like these computers are blazingly fast from the cpus to the SSDs - after an update has downloaded, what could it possibly be do…

Always wondered the same, re: updates. To be fair, macOS I believe is downloading an entire OS image each time. macOS is immutable root, like Fedora Silverblue, so OS updates download the entire OS image each time.

On a package-based system you're doing a diff update, essentially.

Then again, even Fedora Silverblue image updates don't take nearly as long as macOS.

At least both are better than Windows, god knows what's going on in Microsoft's update process.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

frabonacci wrote: post #29
Khaine wrote: post #8

How does this compare to Lima[1] and Tart[2], which are similar? Also, would it be possible to run BSDs with this? [1] https://lima-vm.io [2] https://tart.run

Yes, lume relies on Apple's Virtualization framework and can run BSD on a Mac with Apple silicon: https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon I'll definitely document the option in the README, thanks! On Lima: - Lima focuses on Linux VMs and doesn't support managing macOS VMs. - It is more of a container-oriented way of spinning up Linux VMs. We're still debating whether to go in that direction with lume, but the good news…

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by [deleted] »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #40

I know the Mac hardware is pretty trick, but man, I do most of my dev on Linux and have a Framework Laptop (AMD) running Ubuntu; it's just really nice for dev stuff to work the same way it does on our production environment... Also, the frequency and size and time to install MacOS updates - like these computers are blazingly fast from the cpus to the SSDs - after an update has downloaded, what could it possibly be do…

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by f-trycua »

ammmir wrote: post #14

congrats on the open sourcing and launching! beyond the desire to run VMs in "1 command", i don't quite get the reasoning behind this project. could you elucidate? like, besides running macOS VMs, how is it different from lima, colima, and friends? the name lume is quite unfortunate. the hard part about running VMs isn't really how to launch them (well, ahem, i'm looking at you, qemu), but getting data in and out, an…

Thanks for the feedback! I actually went into more detail about the project's reasoning and how it compares to lima/tart in another comment.

Interestingly, we left out the screenshot and exec features from this initial release so the CLI wouldn’t get too cluttered. We’re rolling out another update next week that will let you request screenshots programmatically, stream the VNC session in your browser via noVNC, run commands remotely over SSH, add clipboard support (finally!), and more.

As for cloning, you can indeed clone a running VM. However, suspending a VM isn’t supported in this release yet, even though it’s possible with the Apple Virtualization.framework. I’ll open an issue to track that work. Thanks again for the suggestions!

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

#46

Post by hnlmorg »

CharlesW wrote: post #32
hnlmorg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I wouldn’t recommend macOS as a server OS unless you’re doing something that is specifically macOS dependent (like automated e2e testing of macOS / iOS software). Everything server related that is easy to do on Linux or BSD is at least an order of magnitude more painful on macOS. And like Windows, you cannot run it headless. In fact Windows actually had better support for running headless than macOS despit…

> And like Windows, you cannot run it headless. As an FYI for anyone who needs/wants to do this, the workaround is a headless display adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9W2HHM1

Sorry, I should have been more specific when I said "headless" because there are a couple of different interpretations:

- Headless software (can run without a GUI): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_software

- Headless computer (can run without a monitory nor input devices): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_computer

macOS has VNC built in so it can run as a "headless computer" but you cannot run it without the GUI. So you end up paying a massive memory and disk storage tax for running any CLI tools.

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

#47

Post by f-trycua »

bawana wrote: post #21

So will this ever be able to run a lightweight windows vm?

Yes, it will - not sure about the lightweight part though :)

We're currently working out the details. It was left out of the initial release, but it’s feasible starting from a Windows on ARM image. I'll create an issue to track this work. Thanks for the feedback!

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

#49

Post by buildbot »

traveler1 wrote: post #37
mightysashiman wrote: post #19

Would you mind educating me about use cases for having one or even multiple MacOS VMs on an apple silicon machine please?

I have an M4 Mac Mini running the following in a VM: - OpenWRT (previously OPNSense & once Mikrotik RouterOS) using 2x 2.5Gbps Ethernet NICs via USB-C - OpenMediaVault (Exposing a 4-bay DAS via USB-C, 2x3TB Drives in Btrfs RAID-1) - HassOS (Home Assistant OS) On the host, I'm running OLlama and a reverse proxy through Docker. The whole thing uses 7 watts of power at any given time - I've seen max peaks of 12w when ru…

I’d use a Mac Mini in a heartbeat if they had an ECC option :(

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

#50

Post by threecheese »

traveler1 wrote: post #37
mightysashiman wrote: post #19

Would you mind educating me about use cases for having one or even multiple MacOS VMs on an apple silicon machine please?

I have an M4 Mac Mini running the following in a VM: - OpenWRT (previously OPNSense & once Mikrotik RouterOS) using 2x 2.5Gbps Ethernet NICs via USB-C - OpenMediaVault (Exposing a 4-bay DAS via USB-C, 2x3TB Drives in Btrfs RAID-1) - HassOS (Home Assistant OS) On the host, I'm running OLlama and a reverse proxy through Docker. The whole thing uses 7 watts of power at any given time - I've seen max peaks of 12w when ru…

Out of curiosity, why not containers for OMV and Haas? QoS? And I’m dying to know what you are using openwrt for. I’m looking at setting up a Mini as well, and have been using Colima/LIMA to run containers on Rosetta/Mac vz locally and it seems to work well enough.
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