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Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

rkiselenko.dev

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Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#51

Post by goranmoomin »

From the title, I hoped so much that this was about using UTM on Apple Silicon iPads – don’t really want the person who always complains about Apple, but it’s really a pity that the iPad has such a strong CPU inside (I own an M4 iPad Pro) and can’t do any realistic development on it.

Last time I checked, there really isn’t any way to virtualize ARM machines on the iPad with UTM (unless you’re on a lower iOS version), and emulating x86_64 machines were slow enough (even on M4 iPads) and not really usable.

I’m on an environment where iPads are fine but equivalent MacBooks aren’t (stupid rules), and got this machine for hope that I might tinker development with iPads, but I gave up running stuff locally and just boot up an EC2 instance whenever I really want to do something. It’s a pity.

(BTW, from the article, why would anyone really emulate a Linux machine with UTM on Apple Silicon? From my experience ARM64 Linux images are really good at compatibility…)

Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#52

Post by SSLy »

goranmoomin wrote: post #51

From the title, I hoped so much that this was about using UTM on Apple Silicon iPads – don’t really want the person who always complains about Apple, but it’s really a pity that the iPad has such a strong CPU inside (I own an M4 iPad Pro) and can’t do any realistic development on it. Last time I checked, there really isn’t any way to virtualize ARM machines on the iPad with UTM (unless you’re on a lower iOS version),…

The fault here is Apple having exclusive access to JIT, UTM on iPadOS/iOS can't fix that.

Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#53

Post by drob518 »

runeks wrote: post #26
dijit wrote: post #3

I really like UTM, I especially like UTM remote on the iPad. The issue is that of course Apple computers that are large enough to run VMs are… expensive. So I have instead found myself using proxmox on a cheaper (by comparison) threadripper machine. The added bonus is that xterm.js (the default LXC console viewer) works wonderfully on the iPad- Though of course you can use prompt3 for heavier duty stuff. The other us…

> The issue is that of course Apple computers that are large enough to run VMs are… expensive. Expensive compared to what? UTM uses Apple Virtualization Framework, which lets the guest VM only occupy as much memory as it's actually using (instead of reserving all of its available memory). This means it's viable to run a Linux VM on e.g. an 8GB RAM MacBook Air.

The cost of RAM on Apple machines is far above the market price for the same RAM in the PC world. Apple quotes a loss leader with a minimum configuration, but as soon as you up the specs to something usable by a developer for VMs or LLMs, the price has ballooned.

Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#54

Post by goranmoomin »

thinker5555 wrote: post #11

Maybe I'm just really out of my depth on this, but it feels like there's not a lot of information about _why_ these particular steps and tools are used. Why are 4 different Linux images needed? Why are there all of these steps to create a one-time use "init.iso"? Is it just so the cloud-init script can run? I see the call to mkisofs is referencing "cidata", but it's the only place in the whole page that "cidata" show…

From my understanding, you really need only one image – the article is just providing four for your tastes (Fedora/Ubuntu, aarch64/x86_64). The images are linux installers, which “understand” cloud-init (because it’s “industry standard”), so if you place the {user,meta}-data file in the right place (a volume named CIDATA, it seems[0]), they can configure your installation without really having to go through the tedious process of configuring through the installation process, install packages, and so on.

I don’t understand why anyone would go to the route of emulation in 2025, but if someone wants to run an x86_64 image with UTM, well that’s the only route – I’d suggest just going to an aarch64 image. Things were a bit more rough back in 2020, but stuff got much better and I don’t remember any compatibility problems these days.

[0] https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/datasou...

Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#55

Post by cosmic_cheese »

treesknees wrote: post #35

UTM is great when you’re using native ARM versions of Linux or Windows. Where it (or QEMU) is absolutely terrible is trying to emulate x86 for working on legacy apps or for retro computing. For example, try installing a Windows 2000 vm. It won’t even get past the initial setup screen because it runs so slowly. My saving grace has been that Windows 11 ARM also has its own x86 translation layer, so I can still run many…

WINE also runs under Rosetta and can handle 32-bit apps, which can help improve x86 32-bit Windows app coverage. Not everything runs well under it but it has settings for which version of Windows it simulates which allows it to run some things that 11 can’t.

Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#56

Post by goranmoomin »

SSLy wrote: post #52
goranmoomin wrote: post #51

From the title, I hoped so much that this was about using UTM on Apple Silicon iPads – don’t really want the person who always complains about Apple, but it’s really a pity that the iPad has such a strong CPU inside (I own an M4 iPad Pro) and can’t do any realistic development on it. Last time I checked, there really isn’t any way to virtualize ARM machines on the iPad with UTM (unless you’re on a lower iOS version),…

The fault here is Apple having exclusive access to JIT, UTM on iPadOS/iOS can't fix that.

Yeah it’s pretty unfortunate that such capabilities are locked to special entitlements.

Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#57

Post by threecheese »

The docs for UTM seem to indicate that jailbreaking or sideloading is required, and with my current reliance on the Apple stack (macs, HomePods, tv etc) I really worry about getting my account banned - even though I’d only ever use this for development.

Is this an unreasonable fear?

Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#58

Post by corv »

anpep wrote: post #45

Ever since I discovered OrbStack, my M1 has become the perfect laptop for me. OrbStack has great UX, massive FS performance, Docker & Kubernetes support, and a bunch of really clever people behind it. Everyone doing linux development on a Mac should try it

It's really good but the fs caching has bit me a couple times before I realized what was going on.

Re: Development on Apple Silicon with UTM

#59

Post by voxic11 »

threecheese wrote: post #57

The docs for UTM seem to indicate that jailbreaking or sideloading is required, and with my current reliance on the Apple stack (macs, HomePods, tv etc) I really worry about getting my account banned - even though I’d only ever use this for development. Is this an unreasonable fear?

UTM requires jailbreaking/sideloading to install on iOS because it violates App Store policies so it can't be distributed via the App Store.

On macOS the Mac App Store has much less restrictive policies so UTM is actually approved to be installed via the Mac App Store. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/utm-virtual-machines/id1538878... Also macOS allows you to install and run applications which aren't approved by the Mac App Store. So using UTM as described in the article doesn't violate any Apple policies.

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